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I 


a  *  o 


HERBAET 


OFTHE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


JOHANN    FRIEDRICH    HERBART 


PIONEERS    IN    EDUCATION 

HERBART 

AND    EDUCATION    BY    INSTRUCTION 

BY 
GABRIEL   COMPAYRE 

CORRESPONDENT   OF   THE    INSTITUTE  J    DIRECTOR   OF  THE  ACADEMY 

OF  LYONS;  AUTHOR  OF  "PSYCHOLOGY  APPLIED  TO 
EDUCATION,"  "LECTURES  ON  PEDAGOGY," 

"A   HISTORY   OF    PEDAGOGY,"    ETC. 


TRANSLATED  BY 
MARIA  E.  FINDLAY,  B.A. 


NEW  YORK 

THOMAS  Y.   CROWELL  &  CO. 
PUBLISHERS 


C  5 


COPYRIGHT,  190T, 

BY  THOMAS   T.   CKOWELL  &  COMPANY. 
PUBLISHED,  SEPTEMBEB,  1907. 


CONTENTS   AND   SUMMAET 

PAGE 

PREFACE      ..........    vii 

I.  Life  of  Jean-Frederic  Herbart  (1776-1841).  —  His  early 

places  of  residence :  Oldenburg,  Jena,  Bremen,  Gottin- 
gen.  —  The  successor  of  Kant  at  the  University  of 
Konigsberg  (1809-1833).  —  He  returns  to  Gottingen 
and  ends  his  life  there  (1833-1841).  —  Forming  of  his 
intellect.  —  His  natural  gifts  and  the  multiplicity  of  his 
aptitudes.  —  His  mother's  influence.  —  His  precocity  in 
philosophy.  —  How  he  became  a  teacher.  —  His  years 
as  a  tutor  in  Switzerland  (1797-1800).  —  Influence 
of  Pestalozzi  on  his  theories.  —  Points  of  resemblance 
and  of  contrast  between  the  two  teachers.  —  Practice  in 
teaching  joined  to  the  theory  of  education.  —  The 
Konigsberg  Pedagogical  Seminary.  —  Few  vicissitudes 
in  Herbart 's  quiet  life.  —  His  marriage  (1811).  —  His 
death  (August  11,  1841) 1 

II.  Herbart's  psychology  and  its  pedagogical  consequences,- 
—  Pedagogy   based   on   psychology.  —  Exposition   of 
Herbart's    psychology.  —  A    matter    apart    from    his 
mathematical  speculations.  —  His  conception  opposed 
to  idealism.  —  Absence  of  faculties.  —  There  are  in  the 
mind  representations  gained  from  experience.  —  Her- 
bart 'a  spiritualism.  —  The  soul  a  monad  lacking  con- 
tents and  without  original  activity.  —  Struggle  of  ideas 
for  consciousness.  —  Static  and  dynamic  states  of  mind. 
—Attraction  and  repulsion  of  ideas. — Fusions  and  com- 
plexes. —  Psychical  mechanism.  —  Sentiments  and  vo- 

iii 


1 65083 


iv  CONTENTS  AND  SUMMARY 

PAGE 

litions.  —  Sensation  a  mode  of  intelligence.  —  Criticism 
of  Herbart's  psychology.  —  Pedagogical  intellectualism 
a  result  of  psychological  intellectualism.  —  Power  of 
education.  —  Its  limitations.  —  The  body  the  physio- 
logical obstacle.  —  Criticism  of  formal  culture.  — 
"Knowledges"  not  valuable  for  themselves.  —  Theory 
of  apperception.  —  Its  importance.  —  Home  education 
superior  to  public  education. — Disadvantages  of  public 
instruction.  —  Reestablishment  of  the  individuality  in 
Herbart's  system.  —  Necessity  of  studying  the  disposi- 
tion of  each  individual.  —  Diversity  of  temperaments. 

—  Abnormal  children.  —  Pedagogy  the  goal  of  all  the 
sciences.  —  Necessity  of  uniting  practice  and  theory.  — 
Science  and  the  art  of  education 17 

III.  Herbart's  intellectual  pedagogy.  —  Its  complexity.  — 
Difficulty  of  a  brief  exposition. — The  foundation  of  edu- 
cation is  instruction.  —  To  instruct  the  mind  is  to  con- 
struct it.  —  Interest  the  essential  condition  of  instruc- 
tion.— Two  fundamental  sources  of  interest :  acquaint- 
anceship with  nature,  and  dealings  with  mankind.  — 
Various  forms  of  interest.  —  Empirical  interest.  — 
Speculative  interest.  —  ^Esthetic  interest.  —  Sympa- 
thetic interest.  —  Social  interest.  —  Religious  interest. 
All  the  forms  of  interest  should  be  cultivated.  —  The 
"many-sided  interest."  —  Exclusiveness  and  narrow- 
ness of  mind.  —  The  full  life.  —  Can  a  single  individual 
attain  it? — New  distinction:  "direct"  and  "indirect" 
interest.  —  Direct  interest  springs  from  the  things 
themselves.  —  Relation  of  direct  interest  and  of  involun- 
tary attention. — Criticism  of  attention  called  voluntary. 

—  Primitive  attention  and  apperceptive  attention.  — 
Important  role  of  apperceptive  attention. — The  point  of 
departure  for  instruction  is  experience.  —  Rules  to  follow 
to  arouse  attention.  —  Nothing  should  be  taught  which 


CONTENTS  AND  SUMMARY  v 

PAGE 

is  entirely  new.  —  The  four  "moments"  of  instruction : 
clearness,  association,  systematization,  and  method.  — 
Intuition.  —  It  should  be  completed  by  description.  — 
The  three  "methods"  or  "modes"  of  instruction. — 
Descriptive,  analytic,  and  synthetic  methods.  —  Analy- 
sis arranges  and  defines  the  intuitions.  —  It  proceeds 
above  all  by  questions.  —  Synthesis  occurs  particularly 
in  didactic  expositions.  —  Defects  and  virtues  of  Her- 
bart's  pedagogical  theories.  —  Excessive  systematiza- 
tion and  artificial  methodizing.  —  Integral  education. 
—  The  perfect  man.  —  All  matters  of  instruction  in- 
cluded in  his  schedule  of  studies.  —  Preference  for  the 
positive  sciences.  —  Herbart's  opinion  of  the  study  of 

ancient  languages 44 

IV.  Moral  culture.  —  Man  measured  by  his  desires.  — 
Will  depends  on  knowledge.  —  Special  rules  of  moral 
culture.  —  Its  point  of  departure  in  experience.  —  Dis- 
cipline or  "  control  of  children."  —  Preparatory  period 
before  moral  culture  should  begin.  —  Aim  and  char- 
acteristics of  discipline.  —  Threats.  —  Watching.  — 
Disciplinary  punishments.  —  Corporal  chastisement.  — 
"Pedagogic"  punishments.  —  Herbart  and  Mr.  Her- 
bert Spencer.  —  Authority  and  affection.  —  The 
mother's  role.  —  Virtue  the  supreme  aim  in  life.  — 
Herbart's  moral  system.  —  Attraction  of  goodness 
substituted  for  the  categorical  imperative.  —  Criticism 
of  transcendental  freedom.  —  A  moral  system  without 
free  will  and  without  obligation.  —  The  five  moral 
ideas.  —  Inner  liberty.  —  Perfection.  —  Good-will.  — 
Law.  —  Justice.  —  The  moral  ideas  result  from  the  re- 
lationships of  the  ideas  and  the  volitions.  —  Morality, 
like  mentality,  is  the  product  of  experience.  —  The 
"aesthetic  necessity."  —  Conscience  and  taste.  —  Moral 
judgments  are  none  other  than  aesthetic  judgments.  — 


vi  CONTENTS  AND  SUMMARY 

PAGE 

Intellectual  conditions  necessary  to  the  formation 
of  aesthetic  judgments.  —  Character.  —  Formation  of 
character.  —  "  Obj  ective  "  character.  —  "  Subj  ective  " 
character.  —  "Memory  of  the  will."  —  Role  of  action 
in  moral  culture.  —  Criticism  of  Herbart's  moral  sys- 
tem. —  Special  processes  of  moral  culture.  —  It  is  neces- 
sary to  control  the  child.  —  It  is  necessary  to  direct  his 
mode  of  action.  —  Rules  or  maxims  of  conduct.  — 
Calmness  and  serenity  of  mind.  —  Approval  and  blame. 

—  Warning  and  exhortation.  —  Religious  education     .    82 
V.   Herbart's    influence.  —  A    Herbartian    library.  —  The 

Herbartian  pedagogical  school  in  Germany.  —  Its  lead- 
ing representatives.  —  Ziller  (1817-1883).  —  The  peda- 
gogical seminary  at  Leipzig.  —  Original  and  bizarre 
methods.  —  Ziller's  concentration  plan.  —  Reasons 
given  for  the  coordination  of  studies.  —  Stoy  (1815- 
1885).  —  The  seminary  at  Jena.  —  M.  Rein,  Stoy's  suc- 
cessor at  Jena.  —  Otto  Frick  and  the  Halle  Institute.  — 
Slow  spread  of  the  ideas  of  Herbart.  —  Reasons  for  their 
success.  —  The  United  States  another  centre  of  the  Her- 
bartian pedagogy.  —  American  Herbartians :  Mr.  de 
Garmo,  Mr.  McMurry,  Colonel  Parker,  William  James, 
etc.  —  Causes  of  Herbart  'a  success  in  America.  —  In- 
fluence of  Herbart  in  England,  in  Italy,  and  in  France. 

—  Conclusion :  why  the  Herbartian  movement  will  last. 

—  Herbart  had  faith  in  education.  —  He  had  faith  in 
instruction.  —  He  had  imagined  a  society  based  on  the 
progress  of  individuals 113 

BIBLIOGRAPHY .  141 


PREFACE 

WE  desire  to  call  attention  to  a  thinker  who  is 
worthy  of  being  placed  in  the  very  first  rank  of 
educationists,  both  as  theorist  and  practical  teacher. 

Kousseau  was  a  romance  writer;  Herbert  Spencer, 
a  brilliant  essayist  in  the  field  of  education.  ^Her- 
bart  was  at  once  a  schoolmaster  and  a  profound 
philosopher;  and  if  it  could  be  said  of  him  that  he 
was  "JJie  father  of  modern  psychology/'  he  has  no 
less  a  claim  to  be  considered  the  founder  of  a  scien- 
tific pedagogy,  with  psychology iLs  fas  basis. 

Pestalozzi,  a  man  of  admirable  natural  gifts,  but 
gifts  which  lacked  the  support  of  a  sound  psy- 
chology, had  only  dim  perceptions  and  "partial 
intuitions  "  ;  and,  also,  his  theory  concerned  almost 
entirely  the  education  of  little  children  and  ele- 
mentary instruction. 

Herbart  had  all  the  resources  of  a  subtle  dialecti- 
cian and  of  a  learned  psychologist,  and  he  built  up 
with  hands  powerful,  but  somewhat  awkward,  a 
whole  system;  a  system  wide  and  full,  which  em- 
braces the  whole  field  of  education  and  is  applica- 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

ble  to  every  style,  —  to  youth  as  well  as  to 
childhood.  His  works  no  longer  present  to  us 
disconnected  opinions,  disjecti  membra  poetae,  but 
a  solidly  linked  and  harmonized  doctrinal  whole. 
Parts  of  it  are  certainly  open  to  criticism,  but 
every  one  must  acknowledge  and  admire  its  firm, 
well-marshalled  order.  In  addition  to  this,  we 
note  that  he  was  not  satisfied  with  theorizing  and 
arguing  about  the  general  laws  of  education;  he 
studied  narrowly  and  with  infinite  care  the  small- 
est details  of  applied  pedagogy;  he  did  not  keep 
the  science  apart  from  the  art  of  education;  he 
extended  the  same  watchful  care  over  both 
together;  his  science  was  replete  with  abstract 
conceptions  and  bold  generalizations;  his  art  de- 
scended to  the  smallest  details  and  abounded  in 
methods  and  practical  devices. 

We  shall  try  to  give  an  idea  of  this  vast  system, 
with  the  intention  of  throwing  light  on  a  theory 
of  education,  which  is  at  times  obscure  and  always 
complicated ;  we  shall,  so  to  say,  try  to  make  this 
somewhat  muddy  stream  clearer;  and  this  not 
without  the  fear  of  weakening  it  by  our  abridg- 
ment and  of  making  it  shallower  by  our  explana- 
tions. 

The  reasons,  in  our  opinion,  why  Herbart's 
system  of  education  is  to  be  recommended  is,  in 


PKEFACE  ix 

the  first  place,  because  lie  claims  to  haveestab- 
lished  it  on  experience,  —  on  the  natural  history 
of  the  mind.     But   if   Herbart   is   a  realist  who 
breaks  with  the  metaphysical  dreams  of  his  age, 
in  his  own  way  he  is  also  an  idealist;  and  educa- 
tion as  he  conceives  it,  education  aiming  above__all_. 
at  forming  the  individual,  the  human  creature,  is  , 
in  no  way  utilitarian.     It  is  in  a  high  degree  moral, 
proclaiming  as  the  Qhief  ends  of  instruction,  morality  | 
and  virtue.     It  is  a  universal  education,  offering/ 
'invitations  to  all  men.     Finally,  it  is  a  democratic/ 
education,   which   counsels   children   to   seek  the 
company  of  workmen  and  peasants;    like  to  the 
education  which  made  Edgar  Quinet,  our  fellow- 
countryman,  a  simple,  free  soul,  loved  by  the  people 
from  his  earliest  years  in  a  rural  district  of  his 
native  land. 

It  is  a  hundred  years  since  Herbart  published 
his  treatise  on  General^  Pedagogy :  it  dates  from 
1806.  And  yet,  this  book,  now  old,  answers  per- 
haps better  to  the  needs  and  aspirations  -of  the 
hour  than  any  other.  At  this  time,  in  fact,  when 
democratic  peoples  are  seeking  more  and  more  to 
base  their  morality  on  science,  it  is  surely  worth 
while  to  listen  to  the  voice  of  a  philosopher  who 
believed,  and  tried  to  demonstrate,  that  all  educa- 
tion depends  alone  on  instruction,  and  that  ideas 


x  PREFACE 

and  knowledge  are  the  source  of  good  feeling  and 
virtue.  When  we  feel  that  faith  in  education  is 
increasing  every  day,  and,  too,  the  hope  that  as  it 
advances  it  will  guarantee  to  human  societies  a 
better  future,  might  we  not  think  that  only  yester- 
day were  said  these  noble  words  of  Herbart :  "  The 
interest  which  we  take  in  education  is  one  of  the 
forms  of  interest  which  we  take  in  human  beings. 
Our  hopes  find  refuge  in  the  hearts  of  the  young, 
in  the  expectation  that  men,  when  they  are  more 
carefully  educated,  will  attain  to  things  yet  beyond 


our  view." 


HERBART 


THERE  is  little  to  tell  about  the  life  of  Herbart. 
It  was  an  unbroken,  simple,  and  peaceful  life, 
comparable  to  that  of  Kant;  the  noble  life  of  a 
thinker  wholly  devoted  to  study,  who  never  let  dis- 
tractions withdraw  him  from  meditation.  There 
are  few  events  to  be  recorded  from  the  laborious 
years  of  a  professor  who  left  his  study  only  for  his 
lecture-room,  other  than  changes  of  residence  and 
the  publication  of  his  books. 

Herbart  was  born  at  Oldenburg  on  the  4th  of 
May,  1776;  he  died  at  Gottingen,  the  llth  of 
August,  1841.  He  differed  from  Kant  in  this,  that 
he  travelled,  either  as  student  or  professor,  to  all 
quarters  of  Germany,  while  Kant  never  left  Konigs- 
berg,  his  native  town.  During  the  years  1788  to 
1794,  he  took  his  first  course  of  higher  studies  at  the 
Gymnasium  of  Oldenburg,  where  his  grandfather 
had  been  head-master.  Then,  from  1794  to  1798, 
he  attended  the  University  of  Jena.  Jena  was  at 
that  time  one  of  the  most  brilliant  centres  for  the 

i 


2  HERBART 

study  of  German  philosophy,  and  Fichte  was  teach- 
ing there.  After  completing  his  university  course, 
Herbart  became  a  tutor,  and  from  1797  to  1800  he 
educated  the  three  sons  of  the  governor  of  Inter- 
laken,  M.  de  Steiger.  It  was  while  he  lived  in 
Switzerland  that  he  had  the  good  fortune  to  meet 
Pestalozzi,  and  to  visit  his  school  at  Burgdorf  in 
1798.  After  a  short  stay  at  Halle,  and  a  two  years' 
residence  at  Bremen,  where  he  studied  and  taught 
specially  mathematics,  he  settled,  from  1802  to 
1809,  at  Gottingen.  He  was  admitted  to  the  doc- 
tor's degree  there  on  theses  purely  pedagogical,1  and 
he  began  his  career  as  university  teacher  in  the 
capacity  of  Privat  Docent  (private  lecturer);  after 
having  declined  an  ordinary  professorship  which  was 
offered  to  him  at  the  University  of  Heidelberg,  he 
became  special  lecturer  at  Gottingen. 

To  this  period  belongs  the  most  important  of  his 
pedagogical  writings,  General  Pedagogy  deduced 
from  the  Aim  of  Education;  2  it  was  published  in 

1  Allgemeine  Paedagogik  aus  dem  Zweck  der  Erziehung  abgeleitet, 
which  Herbart  dedicated  to  his  friend  John  Smith,  senator  of 
Bremen. 

2  These  are  the  titles  of  the  theses  put  forth  by  Herbart  for 
his  Doctorship:    (1)  Ars  pedagogica  non  experientia  sola  nititur; 

(2)  In  liberorum  educatione  matheseos  et  poeseos  maxima  vis  est; 

(3)  Institutio  liberorum  a  Greeds  litteris  incipienda  et  quidem  ab 
Homeri  Odyssea,  nullo  omnino  prosaico,  minime  autem  chrestomatico, 
libra  proemisso. 


HERBART  3 

1806.  Already  in  this  he  was  formulating  the  fun- 
damental principles  of  his  system  of  education,  and 
in  his  subsequent  works  he  only  developed  and  ex- 
plained the  theories  which  he  had  projected  before 
his  thirtieth  year.  These  theories  were  full  of  new 
ideas ;  this  is  seen  especially  in  his  Outline  of  Peda- 
gogical Lectures,1  which  appeared  in  1835,  and  which 
crowns  all  the  others. 

It  was  the  period  when  Germany  was  winning  in 
the  world  of  thought  a  fine  revenge  for  its  defeat  on 
the  battle-field.  Kant,  it  is  true,  had  just  died  in 
1804,  and  his  successor  was  Krug,  a  man  of  no 
account.  But  Schelling  was  lecturing  on  philosophy 
at  Wtirzburg,  and  Hegel  at  Jena.  Celebrated 
additions  were  being  made  to  the  literature  of  edu- 
cation. In  1803  appeared  Kant's  short  essay  On 
Pedagogy.  Schwartz  was  beginning  the  same  year 
the  publication  of  his  treatise  on  pedagogy,  the 
Theory  of  Education.  In  1807  Jean-Paul  Richter 
published  his  Levana.  Niemeyer  was  the  heir  of 
Francke,  and  Director  of  the  Educational  Institute 
at  Halle;  Francke  greatly  esteemed  Herbart's 
work,  quoted  him  often,  and  tried  to  keep  him  at 

1  Umriss  paedagogischer  Vorlesungen,  1835;  2d  edition,  1841. 
The  list  of  Herbart's  pedagogical  publications  is  long,  but  the  two 
essential  works  are  the  General  Pedagogy  and  the  Outlines  of 
Pedagogical  Lectures.  Let  us  add  the  Aphorisms  on  Pedagogy 
collected  by  Hartenstein. 


4  HERBART 

§ 

Halle.  Niemeyer,  in  1806,  was  issuing  the  fifth 
edition  of  the  third  volume  of  his  Fundamental 
Principles  of  Education  and  Instruction;  Fichte  was 
then  delivering  at  Berlin  his  famous  Discourses 
to  the  German  Nation.  Everywhere  an  intellectual 
movement  of  rare  power  was  stirring  and  gathering 
strength.  The  young  professor  at  Gottingen  at- 
tached himself  to  this  movement  with  all  the  ardor 
of  an  intellect  matured  already  by  patient  reflection, 
and  with  the  boldness  of  an  exceptional  originality, 
he  resolved  to  occupy  a  position  apart,  and  deliver 
severe  attacks  on  the  dominant  philosophy.  In  the 
midst  of  idealists  lost  in  dreams  of  metaphysical 
|  pantheism,  Herbart  at  once  announced  himself  an 
••  individualist  and  a  realist  who  put  faith  only  in 
-experience.  Already,  in  1795,  a  philosopher  only 
twenty  years  old,  he  had  dared  to  measure  himself 
(  with  Schelling  and  to  criticise  his  theories,  and  to 
break  with  Fichte,  whose  course  of  lectures  he  was 
following.  In  1802  he  had  openly  rejected  the  doc- 
trine of  Kant  in  his  doctor's  theses ;  he  there  ar- 
dently opposed  the  theory  of  "  transcendental 
liberty,"  and  that  of  " forms  of  a  priori  intuition." 
Yet  it  was  this  same  man  who  was  called  seven 
years  later  to  occupy  the  chair  of  Kant  at  the 
University  of  Konigsberg.  He  accepted  it,  so  it 
would  seem,  rather  to  oppose  the  work  of  his  prede- 


HERBART  5 

cessor  than  to  continue  it.  Herbart  in  no  way 
concealed  his  joy  at  succeeding  the  greatest  philoso- 
pher of  modern  times,  dissent  from  his  doctrine  in 
no  way  diminishing  the  profound  admiration  in- 
spired by  his  genius.  "How  great  was  my  happi- 
ness," he  said,  "in  occupying  this  most  celebrated 
of  all  chairs  of  philosophy,  the  chair  dreamt  of  in 
ambitious  youth,  when  I  was  studying  the  works 
of  the  sage  of  Konigsberg.  .  .  ." 

For  more  than  twenty  years,  from  1809  to  1833, 
Herbart  brought  honor  in  his  turn,  in  a  new  spirit, 
to  the  chair  held  by  Kant  with  so  much  fame  from 
1770  to  1797.  In  1831  another  great  honor  just 
missed  him,  that  of  following  Hegel,  —  who  had 
recently  died,  —  and  occupying  after  him  the  Chair 
of  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Berlin.  But  he 
was  suspected  of  liberalism,  and  the  spirit  of  reaction 
was  triumphant  in  Prussia :  he  was  not  nominated. 
So  it  was  to  Gottingen  that  he  returned,  to  take  the 
place  of  Schulze,  who  also  was  an  opponent  of  Kant. 

How  was  the  powerful  intellect  of  Herbart  formed  ? 
Certainly  by  grace  of  natural  gifts.  He  was~a 
striking  refutation  of  his  own  psychological  doc- 
trine, defective  in  this  respect,  that  it  does  not  \ 
acknowledge  anyjpower  whatever  as  innate  in  the 
souE  The  forclTof  his  insight  into  philosophy  re- 
vealed itself  early  with  extraordinary  precocity; 


6  HERBART 

and  circumstances,  however  favorable  they  may 
have  been,  would  not  suffice  to  explain  the  rapid 
expansion  of  his  genius.  To  the  college  graduate 
at  Oldenburg  in  1793  was  assigned  for  the  custom- 
ary leaving  oration  this  weighty  subject :  " Causes 
of  the  growth  and  decay  of  morality  amongst  the 
common  people/7  and  his  speech  made  a  great 
impression.  The  Jena  student  in  1796  wrote  an 
important  monograph,  On  the  Duty  of  the  State  in 
Education.1 

In  his  youth  Herbart  was  specially  remarkable 
for  an  extraordinary  variety  of  pursuits :  on  the  one 
hand  for  an  aptitude  for  understanding  science,  phys- 
ics as  well  as  mathematics,  and  on  the  other  for  an 
equal  delight  in  literature  and  the  fine  arts.  "Poe- 
try and  mathematics,"  he  said  in  one  of  his  theses, 
"are  the  two  fountains  of  education."  Already  in 
his  play  as  a  child  he  revealed  the  mental  gift  of 
the  mathematician,  before  he  applied  it  boldly  to 
measuring  psychological  phenomena.  Music  had 
attractions  for  him,  and  this  taste  lasted  all  his  life ; 
he  played  different  instruments,  —  the  harp  and  vio- 
lin, piano  and  violincello.  He  composed  a  sonata 
(1808),  and  he  wrote  a  treatise  on  harmony.  He 
was  an  eager  student  of  antiquity,  and  yet  imbued 

1  Herbart  returned  to  this  subject  in  an  essay  published  in  1810, 
On  the  Task  of  Public  Authorities  in  Education. 


HERBART  7 

with  the  modern  spirit.  In  conclusion,  it  might  be 
said  that  he  found  in  himself,  in  the  manifold  diver- 
sity of  his  own  aptitudes,  the  germ  that  inspired 
his  favorite  theory,  the  theory  which  perceives  in 
" many-sided  interests,"  in  a  variety  of  tastes,  the 
first  condition  for  the  successful  training  of  the 
intellect. 

The  work  of  nature  in  forming  the  genius  of  Her- 
bart  was  completed  by  intense  personal  effort  and 
persistent  application.  In  the  midst  of  the  disturb- 
ances of  those  troublous  times,  and  while  the  wars  of 
Napoleon  were  thundering  their  cannon,  he  buried 
himself  in  quiet  study  and  solitary  meditation. 
Finally,  the  tender  solicitude  of  a  devoted  mother 
also  helped  and  sustained  him  in  his  life  of  study. 
His  father,  a  state  councillor  in  Oldenburg,  a  cold 
and  severe  man,  does  not  appear  to  have  exercised 
any  influence  on  the  formation  of  his  mind.  It  was 
otherwise  in  regard  to  his  mother,  a  woman  of 
superior  mental  gifts  despite  some  defects  of  char- 
acter. In  fact,  she  was  of  a  capricious  and  irritable 
disposition;  in  1801  she  separated  from  her  husband 
and  went  to  live  in  Paris,  where  two  years  after- 
ward she  died.  She  had  directed  the  education  of 
her  son  during  his  early  years,  with  pleasure,  herself ; 
not,  however,  without  severity  and  with  some  harsh- 
ness of  the  Protestant  type.  On  account  of  his 


8  HERBART 

delicate  health  (when  quite  a  child  he  burnt  him- 
self in  a  vessel  of  boiling  water)  she  delayed  send- 
ing him  to  the  grammar  school  until  he  was  thirteen. 
She  learnt  Greek  in  order  to  work  with  him.  Ar- 
dently longing  for  the  honors  which  she  saw  would 
be  his  in  the  future,  she  would  not  leave  him  even 
during  his  adolescent  years.  She  followed  him  to 
Jena  when  he  entered  the  university.  She  helped 
him  to  make  acquaintance  with  noted  people,  for 
example,  with  Schiller.  Certainly  Herbart  partly 
owed  to  her  —  to  the  enlightened  care  with  which  she 
surrounded  his  entrance  into  life  —  the  unfolding  of 
his  faculties,  or,  to  use  his  own  expression  (since  he 
rejects  the  notion  of  faculties),  the  cultivation  of 
his  intellect  and  the  early  acquisition  of  a  wealth  of 
ideas.  He  was  not  an  ungrateful  son.  He  tenderly 
returned  the  affection  of  his  mother.  During  his 
residence  in  Switzerland,  in  1799,  she  was  seriously 
ill ;  he  was  wretched  at  not  being  able  to  be  with 
her,  and  he  wrote  to  his  friends:  "My  excellent 
mother,  and  eternal  benefactress,  how  much  suffer- 
ing she  has  borne  for  me  !  How  much  I  wish  I  could 
repay  all  her  trouble !  With  what  joy  I  would 
lighten  her  pain  if  that  were  possible !  .  .  ." 

It  has  been  said  that  Herbart  was  a  born  school- 
master, that  he  bore  the  sign  on  his  forehead. 
That  is  quite  true ;  but  it  must  be  added,  and  there 


HERBART  9 

is  no  contradiction  in  this,  that  he  was  also  born  a 
philosopher.  At  twenty  years  of  age  he  had  ex- 
plored all  systems,  the  most  ancient  as  well  as  the 
most  recent.  He  was  not  less  familiar  with  the 
philosophy  of  Plato,  and  even  with  that  of  Cicero, 
than  with  modern  philosophy.  Before  he  turned 
his  attention  to  new  speculations,  and  attempted 
to  grasp  the  bold  conceptions  of  his  great  con- 
temporaries, he  had  had  as  his  first  master  in  his 
own  home  a  disciple  of  Wolf,  who  initiated  him  into 
classical  philosophy.  Studied  almost  from  child- 
hood, during  adolescence  philosophy  grew  to  be 
his  only  passion,  and  it  continued  a  constant  sub- 
ject of  reflection  and  research,  no  side  of  it  being 
neglected.  In  1808  he  published  a  book  on  ethics, 
General  Practical  Philosophy;  in  1816,  his  Manual  of 
Psychology;  in  1824,  Psychology  as  Science,  founded, 
according  to  a  New  Method,  on  Experience,  Metaphys- 
ics, and  Mathematics;  in  1828,  General  Metaphysics. 
But  all  these  essays  at  constructing  a  comprehensive 
philosophy  tended,  however,  toward  one  end  only, 
an  end  that  lay  nearer  to  his  heart  than  any  other, 
—  to  establish  a  science  of  education,  the  aim  and 
completion  of  all  other  sciences. 

If  the  philosopher  Herbart  was  primarily  a  teacher, 
if  he  became  a  teacher  in  youth  to  remain  a  teacher 
until  his  last  hour,  this  was  in  a  great  degree  owing 


10  HERBART 

to  the  practical  knowledge  which  a  three  years' 
experience  as  tutor  enabled  him  to  acquire  when 
a  youth  of  twenty  years.  Circumstances  made  him, 
in  1797,  the  tutor  of  the  three  sons  of  M.  de  Steiger, 
the  oldest  of  whom  was  barely  fourteen.  This  was  a 
most  fruitful  experience,  for  he  took  his  duties  as 
/instructor  very  seriously.  He  studied  the  characters 
/  of  his  pupils  closely;  he  gathered  observations, 
I  combined  methods,  thought  out  principles.  The 
reports  which  he  sent  twice  a  month  to  M.  de  Steiger 
to  keep  him  informed  about  the  studies,  the  con- 
duct, and  progress  of  his  children, — five  of  these 
reports  have  been  preserved  and  published, — 
bear  witness  to  the  delicacy  of  his  observing  power, 
the  clearness  and  fulness  of  his  views,  as  well  as 
to  the  nobility  of  the  sentiments  which  inspired  him 
in  accomplishing  a  task  which  possessed  his  whole 
heart.  He  left  his  beloved  pupils  with  regret;  he 
never  forgot  them ;  their  old  tutor  remained  their 
friend ;  he  corresponded  with  the  eldest,  Karl,  until 
1817.  There  is  no  doubt  that  it  was  this  first 
contact  with  children,  this  practical  initiation  into 
the  duties  of  a  teacher,  that  decided  forever  the 
destiny  of  Herbart,  determining  the  pedagogical 
tendency  which  was  henceforth  to  control  all  his 
labors. 
His  residence  in  Switzerland  was  also  the  occa- 


HERBART  11 

sion  of  his  contact  with  Pestalozzi,  and  the  influence 
exerted  by  the  humble  teacher  of  Burgdorf  on  the 
greatest  of  modern  education  philosophers  is  un- 
deniable. Doubtless  there  are  profound  differences 
between  them,  all  the  distance  which  exists  between 
the  floating,  vague  enthusiasm  of  a  dreamer,  about 
whom  it  has  been  said  justly  that  he  had  more 
heart  than  head,  and  the  scholarly  reflection,  the 
methodical  reasoning,  of  a  profound  and  subtle 
psychologist.  On  the  one  side  excessive  and  ill- 
regulated  sentiment;  nothing  beyond  "partial 
intuitions/'  flashes  of  genius,  no  well-defined  sys- 
tem; on  the  other,  an  astonishing  gift  for  abstrac- 
tion and  excessive  systematization.  In  spite  of 
these  differences  of  temperament,  the  two  had 
much  in  common.1  *  Both  accepted  sense-perception 
as  their  starting-point.  ' '  Sense-perception,"  said 
Herbart,  "is  the  great  inspiring  idea  of  the  noble 
Pestalozzi ;  but  he  applied  it  over  a  narrow  sphere, 
only  that  of  elementary  education."  Herbart 
wanted  it  to  illuminate  all  parts  of  teaching  and 
education.  "The  essential  element  in  Pestalozzi's 
method  of  instruction,"  he  wrote  again,  "is  that  he 

1  The  importance  that  Herbart  attached  to  the  work  of  Pesta- 
lozzi is  shown  by  the  fact  that  he  devoted  to  him  three  pamphlets 
in  succession :  On  the  Recent  Book  of  Pestalozzi,  How  Gertrude,  etc., 
1802;  The  A  B  C  of  Sense-perception,  1802;  and  finally,  A 
Criterium  for  judging  Pestalozzi's  Method  of  Instruction,  1804. 


12  HERBART 

understood  that  the  business  of  teaching  is  to  con- 

I  struct  the  mind  of  the  child  by  dint  of  definite  and 

(clear  experiences."    And  that  is  also  the  essential 

/  element  of  Herbart's  method.  VThey  ^greejr^gajd  - 

ing  the  necessity  of  selecting  and  adapting  the 

arious  subjects  of  instruction  in  logical  coordination 

needs  of  the  child  as  he 


develops^  naturally.  The  points  of  contact  between 
them  are  numerous,  the  descent  is  clearly  marked. 
But  what  in  the  case  of  Pestalozzi  —  a  man  un- 
skilled, after  all,  in  psychological  questions  —  was 
only  an  outline,  a  kind  of  instinctive  divination, 
this  grew  through  the  industrious  application  of 
Herbart  into  a  scientific  doctrine,  a  complete  pic- 
ture, all  the  details  of  which  had  been  sought  out 
and  examined  with  minute  care. 

The  pedagogy  of  Herbart  aspires,  in  short,  to 
become  a  science.  Here,  for  the  first  time  in  the 
history  of  education,  we  see  ourselves  confronted 
by  a  strongly  organized  body  of  doctrine.  In  con- 
ceiving his  system  Herbart  was  guided  by  abstract 
ideas;  but,  be  it  stated  also,  he  was  something 
more  than  a  pure  theorist.  During  the  whole  of 
his  career  as  professor  he  was  not  satisfied  to  ex- 
pound the  result  of  his  reflections  ex  cathedra;  he 
always  endeavored  to  control  and  justify  his  ideas 
by  experience./  His  first  care  on  assuming  the 


HERBART  13 

chair  at  Konigsberg,  was  to  organize  a  kind  of 
practical  laboratory  as  companion  to  his  lectures.1 
Kant  had  already  thought  of  this  when  he  said: 
"  We  need  normal  schools  and  experimental  schools." 
It  was  this  plan  which  Herbart  made  an  effort  to 
carry  out  by  establishing  a  pedagogical  seminary, 
where  a  few  university  students,  eight  or  ten  at 
most,  prepared  themselves  to  teach  under  his  direc- 
tion ;  and  also  a  practice  school,  where  a  small  num- 
ber of  children  (at  most  fifteen)  gave  opportunity 
for  experiment  and  for  putting  to  proof  and  testing 
the  theories  of  the  master.  Such  was  the  origin  of 
those  institutions  for  pedagogical  apprenticeship, 
which  have  been  founded  in  Germany  2  during  the 
last  century  at  Halle,  at  Leipzig,  and  elsewhere; 
above  all,  at  Jena,  where  first  Stoy,  the  direct  pupil 
of  Herbart  and  a  student  in  the  Konigsberg  Semi- 
nary, and  then  Rein,  one  of  the  most  eminent  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Herbartian  tradition,  have  followed 
their  master. 

His   days   being   divided   between   occupations 
which  were  complements  the  one  of  the  other,  so 

1  See  the  details  furnished  by  Rein  about  the  pedagogical  semi- 
nary in  the  Encyklopddisches  Handbuch  der  Padagogik,  t.  v.  p.  208. 

2  See  the  recent  interesting  work  of  M.  Chabot,  La  Pedagogic  au 
Lycee,  notes  de  voyage  sur  les  seminaires  de  gymnase  en  Allemagne, 
Paris,   Golin,    1903.     See   also,   La  Preparation   professionelle  a 
l'enseignement  secondaire,  Paris,  1902,  by  Ch.  V.  Langlois. 


14  HERBART 

arranged  that  he  could  at  the  same  time  both 
think  and  act,  Herbart  led  a  happy  life:  that 
is  the  usual  lot  of  men  who  study  and  act  both. 
Nothing  in  his  life  recalls  the  dramatic  and  vexed 
career  of  a  Comenius  or  a  Pestalozzi.  Nevertheless, 
he  suffered  some  reverses.  About  the  year  1800,  he 
passed  through  a  wretched  attack  of  pessimism.  He 
lost  his  health ;  he  felt  as  if  each  winter  as  it  came 
would  be  his  last.  Also  at  the  beginning  of  his 
career  he  was  poor.  At  Gottingen,  he  was  forced 
to  exert  himself  to  the  utmost  to  make  a  bare 
living,  wearing  himself  out  by  giving  private 
lessons.  And  when  the  government  demanded 
five  hundred  francs  as  his  contribution  to  the 
war  fund,  he  had  difficulty  in  making  both  ends 
meet.  A  more  lasting  trouble  was  the  small 
measure  of  success  which  attended  his  ideas  of 
reform  amongst  colleagues  indifferent  and  even 
hostile.  He  had  to  suffer  and  be  vexed  by  the 
opposition  of  elderly  professors,  who  were  sunk  in 
routine.  He  was  struggling,  he  said,  "against 
wind  and  tide."  1  And  again,  "My  poor  pedagogy 
has  not  been  able  to  lift  up  its  voice."  But  calm 
and  patient  by  nature,  Herbart  followed  his  course, 
without  letting  himself  be  disturbed  beyond  meas- 

1  See  the  pamphlet  published  in  1814,  On  my  Struggle  against 
the  Prevailing  Philosophy. 


HERBART  15 

ure  by  public  opinion.  ' '  Although  he  was  not  averse 
to  winning  honor,"  wrote  one  of  his  biographers,1 
"he  preferred  to  await  it  even  vainly,  rather  than 
gain  it  by  the  methods  of  the  charlatan  —  methods 
which  he  judged  unworthy  of  philosophy,  and  which, 
in  the  case  of  some  of  his  contemporaries,  he  severely 
castigated." 2 

For  the  rest,  a  union  which  he  contracted  in  1811 
at  Konigsberg  helped  to  render  his  life  happy  and 
fortunate.  He  married  a  young  lady  gifted  with  an 
intelligence  which  fitted  her  to  be  his  intellectual 
companion.  It  was  &  marriage  of  mutual  affection. 
Herbart  is  represented  by  his  biographer  Har- 
tenstein  as  an  active  man,  of  short  stature,  large 
blue  glancing  eyes,  and  resolute  gait.  At  a  party 
in  Konigsberg,  one  evening,  the  company  was  en- 
gaged in  the  innocent  amusement  of  playing  cha- 
rades. The  word  selected  was  "Herbart."  The 
first  syllable  was  represented  as  signifying  "a 

1  The  chief  biographers  of  Herbart  are  Hartenstein  and  Fr. 
Bartholomai.     Bartholomews  biography  has  been  republished  in 
the  series  of  Pddagogische  Schriften,  edited  by  von  Sallwiirk;   we 
quote  from  this  edition  at  present. 

2  We  pass  over  without  comment  the  regrettable  incident  which 
occurred  at  Gottingen  in  1837,  consequent  on  the  coup  d'etat 
of  the  king  of  Hanover.     Herbart  separated  himself  from  his 
colleagues,  many  of  whom  resigned  their  chairs.     The  position  he 
took  up  was  regarded  as  a  weak  acquiescence  in  the  tyranny  of 
the  government.     To  justify  himself,  he  published  a  memorandum 
entitled,  Recollections  of  the  Catastrophe  at  Gottingen  in  1837. 


16  HERBART 

gentleman"  (Herr)j  the  second  as  "the  ornament 
of  the  face"  (Bart,  beard).  Miss  Drake,  a  young 
English  lady,  educated  in  Germany,  was  present, 
and  when  she  was  asked  what  the  whole  word 
represented,  she  exclaimed  in  earnest,  "The  whole, 
that  is  the  ornament  of  the  University."  Herbart 
smiled.  A  few  days  later  he  asked  and  obtained 
the  hand  of  the  agreeable  lady  who  had  declared  her 
sentiments  so  prettily.  Their  union  of  heart  and 
mind  lasted  undimmed  by  any  cloud  for  nearly 
thirty  years.  It  was  severed  by  the  death  of 
Herbart  in  1841;  a  death  swift  and  easy,  which 
overtook  him  almost  in  his  lecture-room.  On  the 
9th  of  August  he  delivered  a  lecture,  as  usual, 
before  a  large  audience.  On  the  llth  he  was 
attacked  by  apoplexy.  "Blessed  apoplexy,"  a  great 
French  surgeon  called  it. 


ii 

IN  the  system  in  which  Herbart  sought  to  con- 
struct a  new  metaphysics,  psychology,  logic,  aesthet- 
ics, and  ethics,  everything  is  interdependent  and 
connected;  and  his  pedagogy  is  only  a  fragment  of 
the  great  whole.  It  is  wrapped  in  a  general  con- 
ception of  nature  and  humanity,  which  determines 
and  explains  it.  It  is,  above  all,  directly  dependent 
upon  and  derived  from  his  psychology.  If  his 
General  Pedagogy,  at  the  time  of  its  appearance  in 
1806,  appeared  obscure  to  his  readers,  that  was 
because  Herbart  left  the  principles  of  his  philosophy 
too  much  concealed  in  it :  he  had  not  yet  explained 
them  separately. 

Although  this  is  not  the  place  either  to  study  in 
detail  or  to  criticise  thoroughly  Herbartian  philoso- 
phy, it  is  yet  necessary,  if  we  wish  to  understand 
his  pedagogy,  to  make  a  rapid  review  of  his  psy- 
chology :  we  shall  select  from  it  only  what  is  indis- 
pensable. 

The  psychology  of  Herbart  is  usually  represented 
as  an  attempt  more  or  less  useless  to  apply  the  cal- 

17 


18  HERBART 

culus  to  the  measurement  of  mental  phenomena.1 
In  fact,  Herbart  considered  the  states  of  conscious- 
ness as  so  many  forces,  isolated  and  independent  of 
each  other,  which,  since  quantity  forms  one  of  their 
elements,  may  be  valued  and  numbered  mathe- 
matically. But  this  is,  however,  merely  a  peculiar 
aspect  of  his  theory,  and  the  one  most  disputed. 
Herbart 's  general  psychology  is  a  matter  apart  from 
these  mathematical  speculations ;  it  is  new,  profound, 
and  lays  claim  to  originality,  although  it  is  allied 
to  the  empiricism  of  Locke,  of  Hume,  and  Condillac. 
To  Herbart  we  owe,  at  least,  the  first  attempt 
to  frame  a  scientific  psychology  —  a  psychology 
which  seeks  to  establish  a  definite  order  and  a 
determined  sequence  amongst  the  states  of  con- 
sciousness. It  is  a  bold  rejoinder  to  the  idealism 
of  Kant  and  Fichte.  To  the  philosophers  who 
regarded  the  world,  time,  and  space,  as  a  purely 

1  It  was  especially  in  the  Letters  on  the  Application  of  Psy- 
chology to  Pedagogy,  addressed  to  Professor  Griepenkel ,  and  written 
towards  1831,  that  Herbart  indulged  in  mathematical  speculation 
and  in  abstract  digressions.  Although  we  owe  thanks  to  M.  Dereux 
for  having  conscientiously  analyzed  this  work  in  his  articles  in  the 
Revue  Pedagogique  in  1890,  we  must  not  look  to  that  work  to  find 
the  essential  ideas  of  Herbart  or,  at  least,  the  ideas  which  ought  to 
live.  The  Letters  are  an  incomplete  work,  and  the  author  treats  in 
them  only  the  preliminaries  of  education ;  he  examines  the  diverse 
temperaments  which  condition  the  degree  of  education  possible  to 
the  child.  The  projected  work  was  to  comprise  three  parts,  of  which 
he  composed  only  the  first. 


HERBART  19 

subjective  creation  of  the  intellect,  Herbart  opposed 
a  conception  which,  on  the  contrary,  sees  in  the 
mind  only  a  reflection  of  things  outside,  a  construc- 
tion from  sense  experiences.  To  the  metaphysicians 
who  represented  everything  as  issuing  from  within 
the  soul  and  the  thinking  subject,  a  realist  replied, 
who,  by  way  of  extreme  reaction,  claimed  to  estab- 
lish that  everything  emanates  from  objects  and  from 
the  external  world,  and  who  was  bent  on  discover- 
ing in  sense-perception  all  the  conditions  of  the  birth 
and  development  of  mind. 

The  point  of  departure  of  the  psychological 
conception  of  Herbart  is  that  there  are  no  faculties 
in  the  soul.  This  must  be  accepted  in  its  strictest 
sense.  Herbart  does  not  admit  in  the  mind  any 
original  force,  any  native  energy.  Others  had  dis- 
missed to  the  land  of  dreams  the  old  machinery  of 
innate  ideas:  Herbart  went  farther,  —  he  rejected 
not  only  ideas  but  innate  faculties.  The  faculty 
theory  is,  in  his  view,  only  a  mythology.  Faculties 
are  idols  that  must  be  overthrown.  In  the  soul 
there  are  only  successive  happenings.  The  mind, 
in  its  original  state,  js^  merely  a  tabula  rasa.  It 
has  no  content.  It  is  created  bit  by  bit,  thanks 
to  representations  or  ideas  (Vorstellungeri)  brought 
to  it  by  sense-perception.  According  to  the  popular 
view  (and  whatever  Herbart  thought,  this  is  the  cor- 


20  HERBART 

rect  view),  nature  has  endowed  the  mind  with  latent 
powers,  inherited  or  innate,  and  these  mental  predis- 
positions, developing  with  the  help  of  the  senses,  give 
birth  to  the  inner  world  of  thought.  Mind  is  thus 
conceived  as  a  primitive  force  which  puts  something 
of  its  own  —  more  or  less,  according  to  the  system  — 
into  its  successive  acquisitions.  In  Herbart's  theory 
thetfe  is  nothing  of  this  sort.  To  Euclid  you  grant  his 
axioms  and  postulates,  and  he  produces  from  these 
a  whole  geometry.  In  the  same  way  you  grant  to 
Herbart  his  sense  representations,  and  by  an  in- 
genious manipulation  of  these  representations,  from 
their  interplay  and  reciprocal  reactions,  he  claims  to 
build  a  mind,  sensibility,  and  will  as  well  as  in- 
tellect. According  to  him  it  is  not  mind  which, 
preexisting  at  least  as  power,  pursues  ideas;  it  is, 
on  the  contrary,  representations  or  ideas  which, 
following  each  other  and  uniting  together,  in  a  way 
pursue  mind,  and  which,  by  forming  groups,  end 
by  fashioning  it.  They  enter  the  soul  through  the 
avenue  of  the  senses,  and  they  become  conscious  by 
accident,  as  it  were;  they  pass  out  and  return  as 
they  please,  or  rather,  as  it  pleases  other  ideas, 
which  now  summon  them,  now  repulse  and  replace 
them,  in  a  perpetual  coming  and  going. 

Let  us  say  at  once  that  it  is  not  easy  to  under- 
stand how  Herbart,  with  such  a  conception  of  in- 


HERBART  21 

tellectual  development,  could  deem  himself  justified 
in  holding  to  a  belief  in  the  existence  of  a  soul.  It 
is  vain  to  say  that  the  soul  is  a  " monad,"  simple  and 
homogeneous,  superior  to  the  myriads  of  monads 
which  people  the  universe;  this  undefined  being, 
this  hypothetical  substratum,  appears  to  be  a  pure 
negation,  for  it  has  no  activity  of  its  own,  possesses 
at  most  a  vis  inertice,  power  to  enter  into  relation- 
ship with  the  world  of  sense  through  the  medium 
of  the  nervous  system.  The  monad  of  Leibniz 
was  quite  a  different  thing:  isolated  and  shut  in, 
having  no  opening  to  the  external  world,  its  prin- 
ciple of  activity  was  in  itself.  Herbart's  monad,  as 
he  himself  defined  it,  "has  originally  no  ideas,  desires, 
or  feelings.  Itself  knows  nothing  of  itself,  nothing 
of  the  external  world.  Still  more,  it  has  no  forms  of 
perception,  as  Kant  thought,  no  laws  of  will  or  action, 
no  sort  of  predisposition  remote  even  from  all  that ; 
its  nature  is  entirely  unknown."  *  One  might  just 
as  well  say  that  it  does  not  exist;  and  if  Herbart 
grants  to  it  a  power  of  "conservation,"  in  face  of 
other  monads  which  try  to  destroy  it,  one  wants  to 
ask  him  what  has  it  to  conserve  ?  To  deny  to  it  all 
preformation,  impoverish  and  empty  it,  so  to  speak, 

1  Text-book  of  Psychology,  Part  III,  §§  152,  153.  In  addition  he 
says:  "I  would  not  admit  any  kind  of  germs,  or  any  kind  of 
natural  predispositions;  such  predispositions  are  the  death  of 
psychology." 


22  HERBART 

to  the  point  of  depriving  it  of  all  initial  force,  —  does 
not  this,  in  fact,  amount  to  denying  its  existence? 

Nevertheless,  Herbart  represents  himself  as  a 
spiritualist;  he  calls  materialism  an  " absurdity." 
The  soul  which  he  has  reduced  to  nothing,  he  de- 
scribes as  mistress  of  the  body  which  she  rules ;  and 
this  preeminence  he  attributes  to  the  place  which  he 
assigns  to  it  in  a  locality  of  the  brain:  "a  splendid 
situation  where  all  the  nerves  meet  and  end." 

However  that  may  be,  such  is  the  way  in  which 
Herbart  reconstructs  the  soul  and  builds  a  scaffold- 
ing for  his  intellectualism  on  the  ruins  of  the  innate, 
without  any  primitive  foundation,  with  nothing 
except  the  deposit  of  sensations;  for  his  system 
might  be  defined  as  absolute  intellectualism  on 
an  empirical  basis.  I  Mind,  as  we  have  said,  is  a 
vague  and  empty  place,  into  which  are  introduced 
one  after  another  different  representations  of  the 
external  world,  " presentations"  of  the  senses. 
Mind  cannot  be  said  to  be  conscious  of  these  repre- 
sentations or  ideas,  since  it  is  itself  nothing  but  the 
whole  group  of  ideas;  but  each  is  conscious  of  itself, 
and  it  remains  so  until  it  yields  place,  as  it  were,  to 
other  ideas.  Then  it  falls  back  below  what  Herbart 
calls  the  "  threshold  of  consciousness."  When  they 
have  returned  to  the  region  of  shadows,  all  the  ideas 
acquired  form  in  the  depths,  one  might  say  the  crypt, 


HERBART  23 

of  the  soul,  as  it  were,  an  unconscious  or  subcon- 
scious underground  region.  They  are  not,  indeed, 
"annihilated,  nor  have  they  disappeared  forever"; 
they  are  merely  latent ;  they  continue  in  a  condition 
'of  tendency,  and  they  aspire  to  reproduce  and  re- 
instate themselves,  as  soon  as  a  favorable  occasion 
will  permit  this  to  occur.  Amongst  all  the  represen- 
tative elements  which  have  gradually  enriched  the 
mind,  there  is  in  progress  a  sort  of  struggle  for  con- 
sciousness, analogous  to  the  struggle  for  life  amongst 
individuals  in  society. 

I/  But  it  is  not  by  chance  or  regardless  of  law  that 
:  the  ideas  stored  up  reappear  in  order  to  again  take 
possession  of  the  light.  There  are  both  static  and 
dynamic  states  of  mind.  Static,  when  ideas  have, 
so  to  speak,  fallen  asleep  and  entered  a  state  of 
rest  or  repose;  dynamic,  when  circumstances  set 
them  free  and  recall  them  to  conscious  life.  Ideas, 
moreover,  find  in  themselves  the  power  to  render 
mutual  assistance,  or  to  struggle  with  each  other. 
They  are  mental  forces  which  act  on  each  other  by 
attraction  or  repulsion,  though  it  is  not  easy  to 
understand  how  an  idea,  which  is  only  a  passive 
representation  of  an  external  object,  can  become 
active,  when  there  is  no  feeling  and  willing  subject 
who  communicates  activity  to  it.  v  But  the  power 
which  Herbart  has  withdrawn  from  the  soul  and 


24  HERBART 

the  faculties  he  must  discover  somewhere,  and  he 
attributes  it  to  ideas.  If  ideas  are  more  or  less 
alike,  they  tend  to  form  groups  and  unite :  that  is 
what  we  call  a  " fusion."  If  they  are  merely  dif- 
ferent, unlike,  they  get  mixed  and  entangled,  form- 
ing a  "  complex."  If  they  are  contrary,  opposed  to 
each  other,  they  cannot  coexist,  and  they  drive 
each  other  out. 

The  soul,  then,  is  like  the  stage  of  a  theatre,  on  to 
which  the  actors  come  in  their  turns  to  occupy 
the  front  place  before  the  footlights.  The  first 
person  appears,  and  stays  until  another,  entering 
in  his  turn,  either  expels  him  by  violence  and  throws 
him  back  behind  the  curtain,  or,  on  the  contrary, 
tells  him  to  stay,  and,  if  they  can  find  a  common  sub- 
ject of  conversation,  makes  friends  with  him.  The 
soul,  in  other  terms,  is  only  a  series  of  states  of 
consciousness,  a  flow  and  ebb  of  ideas,  which  now 
emerge  like  rising  stars  above  the  horizon,  now 
vanish  into  night.  Ideas  agree  with  each  other  or 
struggle  together :  the  soul,  a  dumb  creature,  has  no 
objection  to  raise.  Hence  Herbart  thought  that  ideas 
might  be  subjected  to  quantitative  determination; 
that  was  a  chimerical  notion  which  we  may  wholly 
reject  in  spite  of  the  importance  which  Herbart  him- 
self may^have  attached  to  it ;  but  when  the  notion  is 
transferred  from  the  realm  of  pure  ideas  to  that  of 


HERBART  25 

sensations  and  psychological  phenomena  (so  far  as 
they  are  allied  with  physiological  manifestations)  it 
may  lead  to  solid  and  certain  results ;  hence  we  may 
say  that  Herbart,  by  one  of  his  errors,  even  opened 
up  the  road  for  the  fruitful  researches  in  psycho- 
physiology  of  Lotze,  Fechner,  Helmholtz,  and  Wundt.1 

Everything,  then,  with  Herbart  is  reduced  to 
psychical  mechanism;  " fusions"  and  " complexes" 
of  representations  explain  all  phenomena  of  the  in- 
tellect :  abstraction,  judgment,  comparison,  reason, 
the  notion  of  self,  not  leaving  out  memory  and  im- 
agination. The  other  phenomena  of  the  soul,  sen- 
timents, desires,  volition,  are  adequately  accounted 
for  by  the  relation  of  ideas  to  each  other.  Senti- 
ments are  no  longer  elementary  and  primitive  states, 
but  states  transitory  and  derived :  fleeting  modifica- 
tions of  ideas.  They  are  the  shadows  that  pass: 
the  foundation  of  the  mind  remains,  and  this  founda- 
tion consists  of  ideas.  Education,  therefore,  must 
be  constructed  on  ideas,  and  not  on  the  shifting 
sands  of  sensation. 

Sensation, — and  this  opinion  of  Herbart  has 
maintained  its  prestige  in  the  German  philosophy  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  —  sensation  is  only  a  mode, 

1  On  the  relation  of  the  doctrine  of  Herbart  to  experimental 
psychology,  see  the  recent  work  of  Th.  Jehen:  Das  Verhaltniss 
der  Herbartischen  Psychologic  zur  physiologisch  experimentellen 
Psychologic,  Berlin,  1900. 


26  HERBART 

a  function  of  the  intellect.  Pain  arises  from  a  con- 
flict, an  antagonism  of  two  ideas,  and  from  the  result- 
ing state  of  tension.  Pleasure  is  the  consequence 
of  the  union  of  two  ideas  which  are  in  accord. 
Pleasure  comes  from  the  forward  movement  of 
thought,  pain  from  its  arrest.  Desire  is  only  a 
strong,  vivid  representation,  which  tends  to  maintain 
itself  above  the  " threshold  of  consciousness";  and, 
finally,  volition,  a  special  form  of  desire,  appears 
when  a  representation  which  tends  to  reappear  is 
assisted  by  other  representations,  and,  in  addition, 
belief  that  it  can  be  realized  is  present. 

The  psychological  system  of  Herbart,  as  far  as 
one  can  judge  from  this  short  study,  is  extremely 
ingenious;  but  it  is  difficult  to  perceive  in  it  any- 
thing but  a  work  of  his  imagination.  It  proceeds, 
in  fact,  neither  from  the  old  method  of  introspective 
observation,  the  evidence  for  which  may  be  sought 
in  the  testimony  given  by  the  consciousness  of 
others  (and  this  may  or  may  not  confirm  what  you 
believe  you  have  discovered  in  your  own  conscious- 
ness), nor  the  method  of  modern  psychology,  the 
psychology  which  seeks  the  conditions  of  mental 
life  in  the  study  of  the  nervous  system. 

Physiologists  may  rightly  say  to  Herbart:  You 
neglect  and  slight  the  function  of  the  brain.  At 
least  you  make  very  rare  allusions  to  it.  You  forget 


HERBART  27 

that  ideas  are  only  conscious  manifestations  of 
molecular  movements  and  vibrations  of  the  cerebral 
masses.  On  the  other  hand,  an  objection  may  be 
raised  by  the  spiritualists :  You  reduce  to  nothing 
the  activity  of  the  soul ;  you  leave  it  only  the  func- 
tion of  King  Log  (roi  faineant).  In  ascribing  to  ideas 
alone  the  duty  of  explaining  mental  movement, 
you  annihilate  the  thinking  subject.  We  can  see 
how  they  come  one  after  the  other,  brought  in  by 
the  senses ;  but  there  is  no  one  to  receive  them.  .  .  . 
Herbart  is  wrong  on  both  counts.  He  eliminates 
at  one  stroke  the  double  framework :  the  brain  and 
the  general  consciousness,  the  material  substance, 
and  the  intellectual  principle  of  psychic  phenomena. 
If  " representations"  pass  back  and  forth  in  the  mind 
like  marionettes  on  the  stage  of  a  Guignol  theatre, 
or  Chinese  shadows  behind  a  screen,  that  is  riot,  as 
he  thought,  because  of  relationships  between  them. 
If  they  obey  a  settled  order  of  succession,  it  is  be- 
cause they  are  directed  by  an  invisible  hand;  that 
is  to  say,  either  by  the  brain  or  by  the  soul.  Thus, 
as  M.  Fouillee  has  expressed  it:  "A  cloud  in  the  sky 
does  not  take  the  form  of  a  tower  because  it  had 
previously  the  form  of  a  mountain,  but  it  took  the 
two  forms  successively  under  the  action  of  the  wind 
which  drives  it."  * 

1  M.  Fouillee,  L'tvolutionnisme  des  ide  es-forces,  p.  34. 


28  HERBART 

To  convince  oneself  that  the  hypotheses  of  Her- 
bart  are  false,  it  suffices  to  confront  them  with  a  few 
facts  from  experience.  Let  us  recall,  for  example, 
any  moment  of  our  lives  when  we  felt  a  keen  sorrow 
or  great  joy.  Immediately  after  this  emotional  dis- 
turbance, whether  painful  or  pleasant,  is  it  not  a 
fact  that  some  interior  force,  the  emotion  still  thrill- 
ing us,  summons  incessantly  to  consciousness  ideas 
which  correspond  to  our  feeling,  ideas  connected  with 
sorrow  or  pleasure?  Is  it  possible  that  the  mere 
resemblance  of  these  ideas,  whether  sad  or  merry, 
to  the  idea  dominating  our  mind,  explains  their 
union  ?  No ;  what  proves  that  the  force  of  attrac- 
tion does  not  lie  in  the  ideas  alone,  that  its  source 
must  be  sought  where  it  resides,  in  an  inner  feeling, 
is  the  fact  that  the  busiest  occupations  and  repre- 
sentations, quite  new  and  unlike,  of  such  a  nature 
as  completely  to  turn  aside  the  current  of  thoughts, 
do  not  hinder  the  wave  of  wretchedness  or  satis- 
faction from  overtaking  us  again  in  the  middle  of 
cares  of  quite  another  kind.  We  may  work,  or  we 
may  seek  distraction  in  vain,  or  even  succeed  for 
several  hours  in  turning  our  attention  to  objects 
which  have  no  relation  to  the  happy  or  unhappy 
event  which  has  disturbed  our  life,  but  that  does 
not  hinder  the  sorrowful  or  joyful  ideas  from  gain- 
ing the  ascendant  again,  at  a  moment  when  we 


HERBART  29 

are  thinking  least  about  them.  What  can  be  said, 
except  that  ideas  do  not  control  themselves  by 
virtue  of  their  relations ;  that  above  them  there  is 
a  hidden  power  which  governs  them,  and  which 
intervenes  to  disturb  the  order  of  their  succession. 

Let  us  consider  another  case,  recalling  an  ex- 
perience somewhat  as  follows :  during  hours  of  soli- 
tary meditation,  when  the  senses  were  mute,  even 
when  we  were  controlling  the  stream  of  ideas  with  a 
strong  hand,  the  thread  of  thought  —  to  use  Herbart's 
expression  —  was  suddenly  interrupted  and  cut  short 
by  an  idea  quite  foreign  to  the  matter  which  occupied 
us.  An  unexpected  reminiscence,  a  landscape  long 
ago  passed  from  our  vision,  the  image  of  some  one  we 
have  not  seen  for  years,  —  these  come  and  disturb 
us  by  their  sudden  apparition.  They  come  from  I 
do  not  know  where,  and  they  have  no  relation  what- 
ever to  the  reflections  which  were  absorbing  us.  An 
internal  spring  was  touched,  a  latent  activity  of  the 
imagination,  or  modification  of  the  cellules  of  the 
brain,  and  caused  a  sleeping  image  to  awaken.  In  > 
any  case,  the  logical  association  of  ideas  does  not 
hold  good  here,  and  the  theory  of  Herbart  regard- 
ing an  intrinsic  interlacing,  a  normal  union  of  ideas, 
falls  once  more  to  the  ground. 

But,  true  or  false,  the  psychology  of  Herbart  is 
the  foundation  of  his  pedagogy,  and  it  is  possible 


30  HERBART 

already  to  discern,  according  to  what  has  just  been 
said,  what  will  be  the  general  characteristic  features 
of  his  system  of  education. 

In  the  first  place,  from  a  psychological  intellec- 
tualism  which  explains  the  soul  as  consisting  only 
of  a  series  or  a  network  of  representations  or  ideas, 
arises  a  pedagogical  intellectualism  which  makes 
instruction,  that  is,  the  acquisition  of  ideas,  the  only 
basis  of  education.  Even  the  formation  of  charac- 
ter will  depend  on  forming  the  intellect.  There 
will  be  no  manner  of  separation  or  scission  between 
intellectual  and  moral  education.  The  understand- 
ing will  be  the  principle  of  the  will,  and  actions  will 
conform  to  ideas. 

A  second  consequence  of  this  psychological  em- 
piricism of  Herbart  is  that  the  influence  of  education 
.sets  up  a  claim  to  be  considered  omnipotent.  Since 
^,the  souls  of  men  are  originally  alike,  it  depends 
bn  education  alone  to  form  them.  If  there  are  no 
inborn  intellectual  tendencies  which  assist  the 
educator,  neither  does  the  soul  inherit  vicious  or 
adverse  inclinations  to  hinder  his  efforts.  He  can 
write  at  will  on  the  white  pages  of  the  child's 
understanding ;  on  this  condition,  however,  that  the 
supposition  in  the  education  of  the  solitary  Emile 
is  made  actual,  viz.,  that  from  his  infancy  only  one 
master  controls  the  pupil.  The  destiny  of  each 


31 

individual  depends  on  the  grouping  of  ideas  which 
the  wisdom  of  his  parents  or  the  ability  of  his 
teachers  has  been  able  to  bring  about  in  his  mind 
when  a  child.  From  this  the  conclusion  inevitably 
follows  that  education  is  the  mistress  ruling  the 
future  of  mankind;  if,  by  a  strange  contradiction, 
Herbart  did  not  restore  to  the  body  the  innate  pre- 
dispositions of  which  he  was  content  to  rob  the  soul, 
and  attribute  to  the  organism,  the  physical  tem- 
perament, those  individual  characteristics,  defects, 
or  virtues,  which  sometimes  favor  the  action  of  edu- 
cation, sometimes  oppose  it,  and  thus  fix  in  a  meas- 
ure the  character  and  destiny  of  individuals  in 
advance,  now  by  over-exciting  intellectual  activity, 
now  by  checking  it.  "Bodily  differences  are  re- 
flected in  psychical  manifestations."  The  body  is 
the  physiological  obstacle,  the  hereditary  enemy. 
It  is  to  the  body  that  individuality  belongs.  In 
consequence,  Herbart  does  not  indulge  that  simple 
illusion  that  one  could  produce  geniuses  or  even 
talented  men  at  will.  He  admits  that  the  best 
education  sometimes  fails,  that  great  men  have  edu- 
cated themselves,  that  men  of  moderate  ability  re- 
main such,  in  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of  their  masters. 
None  the  less  Herbart  is  warranted  by  his  system 
as  a  whole  in  ascribing  very  great  influence  to  edu- 
cation. In  his  pedagogy,  therefore,  he  belongs  to  the 


i    — 


32  HERBART 

believers,  the  men  of  faith.  "Without  the  joyful 
hope  inspired  by  meditating  on  youth,  how  could  one 
overcome  the  benumbing  impressions  made  by  the 
idea  that  the  world  might  remain  always  what  it  is 


now." 


A  third  point,  and  one  of  the  most  important: 
there  can  no  longer  be  any  question  about  the  culti- 
vation of  faculties  in  a  system  which  denies  that  they 
exist.  Although  in  current  psychology  " faculties" 
are  no  longer  held  to  be  anything  beyond  conven- 
tional terms,  labels  for  connecting  a  series  of  phe- 
nomena, methods  of  education  are  none  the  less  still 
in  part  adjusted  to  suit  the  old  faculty  theory. 
Hence  we  still  witness  examples  of  mischievous 
educational  procedure.  We  speak,  for  example,  of 
developing  the  memory  as  such,  as  if  there  were  a 
memory  independent  of  the  successive  ideas  that 
enter  consciousness.  Regarding  judgment  and  rea- 
son, the  same  is  true.  Who  amongst  us  has  not 
made  sacrifice  to  this  ancient  prejudice  of  classic 
psychology?  In  that  case  it  would  then  matter 
little  what  knowledges  were  used  to  cultivate  the 
so-called  faculties,  whether  or  no  they  were  inter- 
esting. Some  science  or  other,  arithmetic,  for  ex- 
ample, would  be  taught,  not  in  order  to  know  it,  but 
to  exercise  the  reasoning  faculty.  Herbart's  posi- 
tion in  this  paramount  and  delicate  question  is  alto- 


HERBART  33 

gether  different.  In  his  opinion,  the  knowledges  are 
valuable  onfy  for  themselves  by  reason  of  their 
intrinsic  utility,  and  not  for  the  doubtful  profit 
which  formal  culture  might  claim  to  derive  from 
them. 

It  seems  an  argument  on  his  side,  that  an  aptitude 
acquired  in  one  branch  of  knowledge  does  not  appear 
applicable  to  studies  in  general,  without  losing  any 
of  its  power  and  with  like  results,  yet  this  should  be 
the  case  if  faculties  really  existed.  Certain  children 
have  good  memories  at  home  and  none  at  school. 
That  would  be  enough  to  prove  that  there  is  no 
memory  faculty  applicable  without  distinction  to 
all  objects;  that  there  are  only  groups  of  recollec- 
tions; hence  we  may  have  acquired  with  ease  a 
knowledge  series  in  a  certain  sphere,  and  be  quite 
incapable  of  acquiring  fresh  knowledge  in  another 
field.  A  certain  study  cultivates  the  mind  in  a 
certain  direction,  not  in  all  directions. 

In  the  same  way  we  have  known  children  who  at 
twelve  years  of  age  gave  clear  proofs  of  the  strength 
of  their  reasoning  power  in  mathematical  science; 
that  was  because  they  had  just  been  studying, 
mathematics.  Afterwards  they  neglected  this  study. 
They  exercised  their  reason  in  other  studies,  histori- 
cal or  philosophical.  At  eighteen  years  of  age  they 
found  themselves  quite  unskilled  in  understanding 


\ 


34  HERBART 

mathematics.  Herbart,  then,  has  some  reason  to 
maintain  that  the  general  cultivation  of  hypotheti- 
cal faculties  is  absurd,  that  the  only  real  education 
is  such  as  furnishes  the  intellect  with  positive  knowl- 
edge. As  an  English  humorist  has  said,  "The 
prescription  for  developing  digestive  power  is  not  to 
chew  elastic  rubber,  it  is  to  grow  strong  on  good 
beefsteaks."  In  the  same  way  intellect  is  cultivated, 
not  by  purely  formal  and  empty  exercises,  but  by 
solid,  substantial,  and  nourishing  instruction. 

Let  us  note  in  the  fourth  place  in  Herbart's 
psychology  an  assumption  of  very  wide  bearing  in 
pedagogy:  his  theory  of  "apperception,"  a  term 
that  has  found  favor  in  modern  philosophy.  It 
was  not  new,  for  Kant  employed  it  to  signify  the 
elemental  knowledge  of  self,  anterior  to  all  percep- 
tion. Herbart,  however,  gave  it  a  different  mean- 
ing. His  apperception  must  be  understood  as 
applying  to  sense-perception,  in  so  far  as  it  is  made 
clear  and  complete  by  representations  already  ac- 
quired by  the  mind.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  new 
expression  was,  perhaps,  not  quite  necessary;  the 
term  "conception"  would  have  sufficed,  if  conception 
is,  as  sometimes  defined,  the  apprehension  of  an 
object  by  the  intellect.  You  look  at  a  rose :  your 
senses  tell  you  its  form,  color,  and  convey  to  you 
its  perfume.  But  with  these  simple,  immediate,  per- 


HERBART  35 

ceptions  others  are  united  that  have  been  formerly 
acquired,  and  which  are  more  or  less  distinct: 
that  this  small  round  thing,  red  or  white,  is  called 
a  rose,  that  you  have  seen  others  similar  in  other 
gardens,  etc.;  this  is,  then,  an  apperception.  Mr. 
Stout,  one  of  the  commentators  of  Herbart  who 
has  given  an  excellent  exposition  of  his  psychology,1 
has  said  that  apperception  is  "the  act  by  which  a 
mental  system  appropriates  a  new  element:"  one 
might  define  it  more  clearly  yet  as  the  act  by  which 
ideas  already  acquired  assimilate  and  incorporate 
a  new  idea.  In  consequence,  they  modify  and  alter 
the  perception :  whence  it  may  be  inferred  that  two 
persons  never  have  an  identical  apperception  of  the 
same  object.  Above  all,  ideas  facilitate  or  hinder 
the  acquisition  of  knowledge :  groups  of  ideas  pre- 
viously acquired  do  or  do  not  lend  themselves  to 
further  acquisitions.  From  this  way  of  conceiving 
the  mind  at  work  acquiring  knowledge,  Herbart 
derived  the  inspiration  of  some  of  his  methods  of 
teaching  which  do  the  most  honor  to  his  pedagogical 
insight,  notably  as  regards  the  necessity  of  rendering 
the  mind  ready  to  receive  instruction.  In  order 
that  a  new  representative  may  be  received  into  the 
circle  of  ideas,  that  it  may  find  its  way  with  ease 
and  security  amidst  the  network  of  knowledges, 

1  See  Mind,  1888,  1889. 


36  HERBART 

the  teacher,  at  the  beginning  of  each  lesson,  must 
prepare  the  ground;  he  must,  so  to  speak,  summon 
up  a  mental  escort  into  the  presence  of  the  newcomer 
to  welcome  and  introduce  him.  In  other  words, 
the  teacher  must  put  before  the  child  only  such 
notions  as  can  easily  combine  with  those  he  already 
has,  and  thus  form  groups  of  ideas  associated  logi- 
cally and  united  strongly ;  on  this  will  depend  not 
only  wealth  of  mind  but  also  strength  and  force  of 
character.  The  old  faculty  psychology  taught  us  that 
when  pupils  enter  the  class-room  they  had  at  their 
disposal  an  intelligence  and  memory  quite  ready  to 
learn  anything  whatever.  But  this  view  is  false; 
it  is  necessary  to  summon,  to  awaken  and  set  in 
order,  those  ideas  to  which  the  topic  selected  for  the 
day's  lesson  can  be  adjusted;  we  must  eliminate  and 
crowd  out  all  preoccupations  which  might  hinder 
the  effect  of  the  teacher's  words,  his  instruction,  from 
penetrating ;  we  must  thus  clear  the  road  for  distinct 
and  fruitful  apperception. 

If  it  was  his  own  psychology  which  suggested  to 
Herbart  those  processes  in  instruction  which  he 
extols,  it  also  led  to  his  definite  conclusion  regarding 
the  preference  to  be  given  to  public  or  to  home  edu- 
cation. He  rejected  the  opinions  of  his  master  at 
Jena,  the  famous  Fichte,  as  much  in  pedagogy  as 
in  philosophy.  Fichte,  having  specially  in  view 


HERBART  37 

national  and  civic  education,  sketched  his  plans  for 
regiments  of  young  men  in  the  gymnasiums ;  Herbart, 
on  the  contrary,  is  concerned  above  all  with  the 
individual  himself,  with  the  man  rather  than  with 
the  citizen.  He  makes  the  reproach  against  the 
State  as  educator  that  it  thinks  only  of  preparing 
bureaucrats.  Home  education,  if  that  were  always 
possible,  would  be  superior  to  all  other.  "That  boy," 
said  he,  "is  infinitely  more  accessible  to  the  influ- 
ences of  education  who  has  been  a  long  time  educated 
by  one  person,  especially  if  he  has  had  the  good  for- 
tune to  be  educated  by  his  mother."  He  was  here 
recalling  a  personal  experience.  When  a  child  passes 
from  hand  to  hand,  it  is  difficult  for  the  masters 
who  follow  each  other  to  establish  authority  over 
him.  For  the  rest,  Herbart  recognized  that  domestic 
education  is,  as  a  rule,  an  unrealizable  ideal,  that 
the  family  is  too  much  occupied  otherwise  to  fulfil 
its  duty  in  this  respect,  and  besides  it  is  often 
too  noisy  and  gay  to  fulfil  it  well.  But  since 
parents  must  send  away  their  children,  let  them 
at  least  be  followed  in  thought,  and  never  lost  from 
view.  These  are  truths  worth  recalling  at  a  time  when 
families  abandon  their  children  to  the  State  more 
and  more,  and  shift  on  to  it  the  burden  of  caring  for 
and  educating  their  children.  The  great  mischief 
of  the  public  school,  according  to  Herbart,  is  that  it 


38  HERBART 

collects  together  children  who  are  very  different, 
unequal  morally  and  intellectually,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  giving  them  a  uniform  education.  Even 
supposing  that  all  had  in  the  beginning  the  same 
starting-point,  they  have  already  had  time  when 
they  become  scholars  to  undergo  very  different  im- 
pressions, whether  at  home  or  in  society,  and  these 
have  modified  their  character  and  intellect.  Hence 
the  inferiority  of  public-school  education,  which, 
bending  all  heads  under  the  same  yoke,  cannot 
mete  out  and  adapt  the  rules  of  discipline  and 
methods  of  instruction  to  the  many  and  various 
aptitudes  of  the  scholars  as  would  a  teacher  in  con- 
versation with  a  single  child.  No  matter  whether 
they  are  ailing  or  strong,  it  presents  to  them  the  same 
difficulties  to  conquer ;  whether  their  pace  is  rapid 
or  slow,  it  conducts  them  along  the  same  road  and 
in  the  same  order.  The  disadvantage  of  public 
instruction  is  still  more  marked  when,  following 
the  theory  of  apperception,  we  consider  that  in- 
struction can  bring  forth  all  its  fruit  only  when  the 
teacher  knows  how  to  impart  it  skilfully  with  all 
kind  of  precaution,  adjusting  it  to  the  complicated 
network  of  ideas  of  which  the  intellect  of  each  child 
is  composed. 

A  philosopher  who,  like  Herbart,  denies  all  innate- 
ness  and  mental  heredity,  would  seem  condemned, 


HERBART  39 

in  consequence,  to  ignore  the  special  and  individual 
elements  in  human  personality.  But  by  reason  of 
the  influence  ascribed  by  him  to  the  physical  or- 
ganism, an  influence  varying  from  one  child  to 
another,  Herbart  reestablishes  the  individuality, 
which  his  system  appeared  at  first  to  compromise. 
To  this  subject  he  devotes  long  chapters.  Hence 
he  does  not  admit  that  to  be  an  educator  it  is  suffi- 
cient to  have  studied  abstract  psychology  and  its 
general  principles.  Since  it  is  the  individual  that 
we  have  to  educate,  it  is  the  individual  that  it  is 
necessary  to  know.  As  an  English  humorist  has 
said,  it  is  not  a  matter  of  grinding  in  a  pedagogical 
mortar  the  sixty  pupils  of  a  class  of  which  John  is  a 
member,  until  they  have  been  reduced,  so  to  speak, 
to  the  state  of  a  mass  of  uniform  youth,  in  order 
to  obtain  the  average.  John  is  not  a  quotient;  he 
is  an  actual  individual  being,  who  must  be  studied 
in  his  own  character,  with  the  virtues  and  faults 
which  mark  him  off  from  all  his  comrades.1 

From  the  writings  of  Herbart  one  could  gather 
precious  contributions  for  the  psychology  of  the 
adolescent  yet  to  be  written,  and  which,  when  once 
in  existence,  will  render  not  less  service  to  the  art  and 
science  of  education  than  the  psychology  of  the  little 

1  John  Adams,  The  Herbartian  Psychology  applied  to  Education, 
London,  1898. 


40  HERBART 

child.  I  mean  a  descriptive  psychology,  in  which 
different  temperaments  will  be  distinguished,  causes 
of  their  diversity  analyzed,  and  then  the  means 
pointed  out  which  should  be  used  as  remedy  for  the 
deficiencies  or  mental  defects  of  youth  according  to 
the  particular  case.  Herbart  traced  out  the  charac- 
teristic differences  between  children,  and  also  those 
marking  young  men,  with  delicate  insight.  He 
deserves  to  be  considered  one  of  the  forerunners 
of  the  science  called  "ethnology."  He  shows  us,  for 
example,  children  of  a  contradictory  humor,  "  an  in- 
tellect that  always  replies  no,"  whom  nothing  suits, 
who  mix  with  everything,  as  it  were,  a  drop  of  bit- 
terness. With  these  morose  and  peevish  natures, 
special  precautions  must  be  taken;  in  order  to  in- 
spire them  with  respect,  or  even  fear,  they  should  be 
subject  to  severe  discipline.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
are  children  who  see  everything  rose-colored,  and 
Herbart  considers  this  superficial  optimism  also  a 
kind  of  disease  which  needs  appropriate  attention. 
Herbart,  like  a  good  psychologist,  had  listened  to 
doctors  and  health  experts,  and  the  question  of 
physical  temperament  attracted  and  held  his  at- 
tention. He  distinguished  seven  classes  of  tem- 
peraments —  four  normal,  three  abnormal.  Here  are 
children  muscularly  feeble,  but  with  a  well-shaped 
head  and  active  intellect.  They  prefer  intellectual 


HERBART  41 

occupations  to  games  and  physical  exercises.  They 
are,  as  Plato  would  have  said, " musicians  "as opposed 
to  "gymnasts."  We  must  take  books  away  from 
their  hands,  force  them  to  play  and  be  active.  But 
the  nature  of  the  physical  organism  is  not  the  only 
source  of  diversity  of  temperament.  Circumstances, 
the  conditions  of  education  and  life,  may  modify  the 
primitive  disposition.  There  are,  for  example, 
blunted  temperaments  which  Herbart  calls  "  Boeo- 
tians"; and  this  intellectual  languor,  this  mental 
heaviness,  is  often  the  effect  of  the  mode  of  life  of 
the  individual  and  of  the  habits  he  has  contracted. 
Thus  the  peasant  whose  thoughts  are  imprisoned  in 
a  narrow  and  predetermined  circle,  whose  imagina- 
tion passes  regularly  from  seed-time  to  harvest,  and 
harvest  to  seed-time,  he  is  condemned  by  the  yoke 
of  his  monotonous  life,  to  become  in  every  land  a 
"  Boeotian,"  whatever  may  have  been  the  original 
wealth  of  his  temperament.  In  the  same  way  a 
child,  naturally  of  very  sweet  temperament,  will 
become,  perhaps,  irritable  and  cross  under  the  in- 
fliction of  repeated  annoyances.  The  most  san- 
guine and  ardent  man  will  succumb  to  melancholy 
if  he  is  subjected  to  a  kind  of  life  which  undermines 
his  natural  gayety. 

But  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  follow  Herbart's 
footsteps  along  all  the  roads  whither  his  observant 


42  HERBART 

intelligence  led  him.  Let  it  suffice  to  have  shown 
the  important  place  that  his  psychology  holds  in 
his  system  of  education.  Since  Herbart's  time,  the 
assertion  that  psychology  and  pedagogy  cannot 
mingle,  that  they  are  "like  oil  and  water,"  is  no 
longer  admissible.  Herbart  employed  his  life  and 
all  his  thinking-power  to  prove  the  contrary. 

That  psychology  is  enough  to  prepare  and  form  a 
teacher,  however,  cannot  be  said.  The  science  of 
education  can  be  the  goal  only  of  the  whole  range 
of  research  of  the  human  mind.  In  order  that 
pedagogy  may  at  last  leave  behind  the  "  gross 
empiricism"  where  it  has  so  long  languished,  it  must 
have  recourse  to  all  forms  of  knowledge;  it  will 
" erect  its  scaffold  on  a  united  group  of  all  sciences." 
The  educator  will,  then,  be  a  theorist  above  all  else, 
-a  scholar,  a  philosopher.  Nowhere  else  is  the 
necessity  of  having  wide  philosophic  views  and 
broad  general  ideas  so  imperative  as  in  pedagogy; 
for  the  hard  daily  toil  imposed  on  teachers  tends  to 
narrow  their  horizon. 

Without  theory,  practice  ends  in  routine ;  but  on 
the  other  hand,  without  practice,  theory  may  lose 
itself  in  the  clouds  of  abstraction.  There  is  at  one 
and  the  same  time  a  science  of  education  and  an  art 
of  education.  Herbart  does  not  separate  them. 
No  one  has  understood  better  than  he  the  complex 


HERBART  43 

and  delicate  conditions  under  which  the  teacher 
of  infancy  and  youth  is  formed,  what  a  heavy  price 
he  pays.  No  one  has  contributed  more  than  he  to 
discredit  and  destroy  the  traditional  prejudice  that 
the  teacher  is  born,  that  a  man  is  a  professor  by 
the  grace  of  God.  Too  often  it  is  imagined  that  to 
become  a  good  schoolmaster  it  is  enough  to  have 
knowledge  and  ability.  Herbart  believed,  on  the 
contrary,  that  skill,  pedagogical  efficiency,  is  ac- 
quired only  by  prolonged  effort,  that  long  practice 
and  exercise  are  necessary,  experience  gained 
through  failure  as  well  as  success ;  at  the  same  time 
there  must  be  the  continuous  hard  work  involved 
in  a  philosophic  investigation  of  the  laws  of  edu- 
cation. 

"It  is  by  meditation,"  said  he,  "it  is  by  reflection 
and  research,  it  is  through  scientific  study,  that  the 
educator  must  prepare  his  mind  and  heart  to  fit 
himself  to  conceive,  feel,  and  judge  rightly  the  par- 
ticular incidents,  the  special  cases,  which  he  must 
meet  in  his  career  as  a  teacher." 


Ill 

THE  pedagogy  of  Herbart  is  a  whole  world  of 
thought,  and  a  big  volume  would  be  necessary  for  an 
analysis  and  exposition  covering  the  whole  ground. 
There  is  not  a  question,  whether  of  pedagogical 
theory  or  practice,  which  he  has  not  attacked  and 
solved.  By  the  side  of  general  notions,  conceptions 
in  which  he  delights  to  revel  with  exceptional  power, 
he  furnishes  abundant  special  rules.  He  abounds 
in  methods,  processes,  devices.  He  is  not  satisfied 
to  skim  over  the  surface  of  his  subject;  he  descends 
to  the  details  of  a  matter  with  minute  accuracy. 
'  Moreover,  a  brief  exposition  of  the  theories  of 
Herbart  is  rendered  difficult  by  his  peculiar  mode  of 
thought.  Some  one  has  said,  "  We  do  not  read  Her- 
bart, we  must  study  him."  So  one  might  say, 
"We  do  not  make  a  synopsis  of  Herbart,  we  are 
forced  to  examine  him  thoroughly."  His  penetra- 
tive power  makes  him  subtle,  and  at  times  his 
extreme  abstraction  renders  him  obscure.  He 
analyzes  beyond  measure.  His  writings  bristle 
with  endless  distinctions,  divisions,  subdivisions. 

44 


HERBART  45 

jv^vr 

His  central  thought  is  constantly  overlaid  with 
incidental  considerations  which  hamper  and  con- 
ceal it.  To  use  his  own  term,  he  does  not  suffi- 
ciently sharpen ' 'the  point "  of  his  ideas.  He  hardly 
makes  any  assertion  without  immediately  gathering 
round  it  corrections  and  reservations.  Doubtless, 
in  the  delicate  matters  of  which  he  treats,  there  are, 
perhaps,  modes  of  approximation  to  truth.  All  the 
same,  one  would  like  greater  clearness,  clearer-cut 
conclusions.  At  the  beginning,  the  reader  loses 
himself  amid  the  twists  and  turns  of  his  elaborated 
reflections.  The  first  impression  is  painful,  confus- 
ing, and  even  annoying.  But  provided  we  return 
to  the  study  of  the  pages  which  at  first  repelled 
us,  one  becomes  attracted,  fascinated,  and  we  be- 
gin to  think  we  may  become  Herbartian.  We  end 
by  moving  at  ease  through  the  windings  of  thoughts 
which  are  endlessly  complex,  and  of  which  we  did 
not  at  first  apprehend  the  strict  logic.  Diamonds 
are  not  less  brilliant  because  effort  must  be  exerted 
to  separate  them  from  their  bed;  so  Herbart's  ideas, 
some  of  them  at  least,  do  not  appear  less  sound  or 
less  admirable,  because  they  must  be  loosened  from 
a  somewhat  rough  case,  and  from  the  scholastic 
form  in  which  he  embodied  them.  Certainly  in  the 
thick  growth  of  his  theories  there  is  more  than  one 
dead  branch ;  but  these  branches  may  fall  and  yet 


46  HERBART 

the  trunk  remain  healthy  and  unshaken ;  and  when 
one  is  allowed  to  neglect  those  parts  of  his  work 
which  to-day  are  of  interest  only  from  the  historic 
and  curious  point  of  view,  there  yet  remain  enough 
living  ideas  for  it  to  be  worth  while  to  gather  and 
bring  them  to  the  light. 

The  governing  idea  of  Herbart's  pedagogy,  the 
\  idea  which  should  guide  us  if  we  wish  to  understand 
\  it,  is  that  the  foundation,  the  only  foundation  of 
'  the  whole  of  education,  is  instruction.     There  exist, 
then,  no  longer  two  distinct  educations,  an  intellec- 
tual and  a  moral  education,  as  those  necessarily 
were  tempted  to  believe  who  acknowledged  distinct 
faculties,  and  who,  in  consequence,  had  to  provide 
for  the  intellect,  the  senses,  the  will,  and  their  sep- 
arate cultivation  each  by  themselves.    Above  all, 
there  is  no  education  as  distinct  from  instruction. 
No ;  the  mental  nature  is  a  unity,  and  consequently 
there  is  only  one  education,  education  by  instruc- 
tion, or  educative  instruction. 

We  are  acquainted  with  the  new  force  which  the 
word  " instruction"  gains  in  Herbart's  writings.  To 
i  instruct  the  mind  is,  he  considers,  to  construct  it. 
It  is  no  longer  a  question,  as  under  the  old  hypothe- 
sis of  faculties  bestowed  by  nature,  of  overlaying 
a  more  or  less  trustworthy  memory,  of  causing 
literary  or  scientific  knowledge  to  enter  an  under- 


HERBART  47 

standing  more  or  less  open.  Knowledge  is  no  longer 
a  mental  ornament,  it  is  a  mental  element.  Knowl- 
edge builds  up  and  produces  mind.  According  to 
the  old  theory,  since  mind  existed  prior  to  expe- 
rience, it  conditioned  the  unity  of  consciousness. 
But  if  it  is  true  that  there  is  no  intellect  apart 
from  successive  ideas,  henceforth  we  must  seek  the 
bonds  that  unite  them  in  the  cohesion,  the  interlac- 
ing of  the  ideas  themselves.  "Whatever  is  isolated," 
said  Herbart,  "is  valueless."  It  is  a  consequence 
of  this  theory  that  instruction  assumes  a  profound 
and  delicate  meaning,  and  that  quite  new  duties 
are  imposed  on  teaching;  its  office  is  no  longer 
confined  to  developing  the  intellect,  since  it  must 
create  it,  and  since  by  the  association,  of  memories, 
by  regular  " series"  of  ideas,  those  mental  forces 
are  aroused  whence  spring  not  only  strength  of 
intellect,  but  also  strength  of  will. 

The  essential  condition  of  fruitful  instruction  is 
that  it  excites  " interest"  and  attracts  it.  A  peda- 
gogical theorist  may  be  allowed  to  be  dull  (and  it 
must  be  acknowledged  that  Herbart  sometimes  per- 
mits himself  this),  but  the  practical  teacher,  the 
schoolmaster,  commits  a  fatal  sin  if  he  is  dull; 
the  first  duty  of  a  master  is  to  be  interesting. 

Interest  is  the  watchword,  the  word  to  conjure 
with  in  Herbart's  pedagogy.  Just  as  in  ethics  he  re- 


48  HERBART 

jects  the  categorical  imperative,  and  as  guide  for 
souls  seeking  virtue  he  desires  to  substitute  for  the 
hard  law  of  Kant  the  pure  but  arid  bond  of  duty, 
the  pleasant  and  attractive  notion  of  the  ideal,  so 
in  pedagogy  he  excludes  constraint,  and  he  tones 
down  effort  almost  to  the  degree  of  suppressing  it. 
"  All  is  lost,"  said  he,  "if  from  the  beginning  we  have 
been  clumsy  enough  to  make  study  a  source  of 
misery  and  torment."  The  charm  of  the  true, 
like  the  charm  of  the  good  and  of  the  beautiful, 
this  is  the  chief  principle  of  education. 

Interest  (die  Interesse)  is  the  liking  one  may 
conceive  for  a  thing,  and  that  causes  one  to  take 
pleasure  in  it.  To  interest  is  to  arouse  the  hunger 
of  the  intellect.  Let  us  mark  well  that  its  aim  is 
not  to  amuse  or  divert,  and  make  teaching  into  a 
play.  Herbart  marked  himself  off  clearly  from  the 
educationists  of  his  time,  called  "  Philanthropists," 
who  claimed  to  make  of  instruction  a  recreation. 
He  will  not  have  "soft  pedagogy,"  or  let  a  teacher 
stoop  to  construct  an  infantile  world  for  his  pupil. 
Interest,  as  he  understood  it,  is  at  once  the  charac- 
teristic of  things  which  captivates  the  attention,  and 
a  feeling  of  curiosity,  of  alertness  and  activity  of 
intellect,  manifested  in  the  mind.  The  term  inter- 
est, then,  is  two-faced;  it  belongs  at  the  same  time 
to  the  object  which  arouses  the  taste  and  the  sub- 


HERBART  49 

ject  in  whom  the  taste  is  aroused.  It  is  interest 
which  is  the  spring  of  mental  activity,  the  principle 
of  intellectual  life.  It  keeps  the  attention  of  the 
class  centred  on  the  lips  of  a  skilful  master,  and  like- 
wise fixes  it  and  holds  it  to  the  observation  of  things 
that  please  them,  or  to  carrying  out  attractive  pieces 
of  work  to  the  end.  The  activity  which  Herbart 
denied  to  the  soul  itself,  he  revived  under  the  form 
of  interest ;  for  interest  summons  up  old  ideas,  calls 
for  new  ones,  and,  in  short,  determines  the  move- 
ment of  the  intellect. 

There  are,  moreover,  two  fundamental  sources  of 
interest:  first,  the  feeling  of  questioning  attention  > 
provoked  by  experience  (Erfahrung),  by  the  study 
of  nature,  and  by  the  search  for  knowledge ;  and  ,-. 
also  interest  springing  out  of  social  life,  the  presence 
of  human  beings  and  communication  with  them 
(Umgang).  Hence  education,  or  instruction,  must 
have  a  double  aim:  to  give  knowledge  of  things, 
and  love  of  humanity.  But  Herbart  divides  only  in 
order  to  subdivide;  and  the  two  forms  of  interest 
are  each  presented  under  three  successive  aspects. 

The  interest  belonging  to  knowledge  has  three  ^ 
phases:     empirical    interest,    speculative    interest, 
and  aesthetic  interest.    Empirical  interest  takes  its  u\ 
rise  in  the  direct  sense-perception  of  things,  from 
variety  amongst  the  concrete  objects  which  nature 


50  HERBART 

or  instruction  presents  to  the  wondering  eyes  of 
childhood.  Speculative  interest  follows  empirical: 
it  has  its  source  in  prolonged  reflection  on  the  objects 
of  experience,  the  need  for  an  explanation  of  phe- 
nomena and  inquiry  into  causes  and  effects.  This 
type  of  interest  is  already  manifest  in  the  ever- 
recurring  "why"  of  the  child.  It  is  the  pleasure  felt 
by  the  mind  in  understanding  the  reason  for  things, 
the  laws  of  nature.  To  enjoy  the  sight  of  the  sky 
studded  with  stars,  that  is  empirical  interest :  to  re- 
flect on  the  origin  of  the  stars,  on  the  causes  of  their 
movements,  that  is  speculative  interest.  Finally, 
^  it  aesthetic  interest  is  fed  by  the  contemplation  of 
beauty  in  nature,  in  works  of  art,  or  in  moral  actions. 
To  this  kind  of  interest  Herbart  gave  a  large  share 
of  his  attention.  He  claimed  that  sesthetic  taste 
should  be  cultivated  early,  as  the  source  of  the  purest 
joys  that  life  reserves  for  mankind,  that  it  should 
be  cultivated  in  every  child  without  exception,  re- 
gardless of  the  social  rank  to  which  he  belongs;  for 
the  day  will  come  —  and  it  is  our  duty  to  try  to 
hasten  that  day  —  when  the  artisan  will  be  in  his  own 
fashion  an  artist,  and  when  beauty  will  become  the 
charm  and  enchantment  of  existence  for  every  one. 
Turning  now  to  the  interest  occasioned,  not  by 
knowledge,  but  by  human  relationships,  which  the 
child  derives  from  his  environment,  his  relation  to 


HERBART  51 

his  fellows,  in  his  family,  in  the  school,  in  church, 
and  in  society,  this  also  appears  wider  under  three 
distinct  aspects.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  sym- 
pathetic  interest,  the  interest  the  chijd  feels  when  it 
takes  part  in  the  joy  or  grief  of  the  people  who 
surround  him:  this  is  developed  at  home,  in  the 
social  life  of  the  school.  In  the  second  place,  there  is 
social  interest,  an  extended  form  of  family  sympathy 
or  school  comradeship;  it  springs  from  reflection 
on  the  important  facts  about  social  cooperation; 
it  is  the  root  of  philanthropy,  of  all  the  social  virtues, 
of  what  to-day  we  call  human  solidarity.  Finally, 
religious  interest  is  the  crown,  the  last  rung  of  the 
ladder  which  the  human  mind  ascends  to  reach 
complete  living,  and  to  exercise  its  activity  in  the 
fullest  way.  Herbart,  who  would  not  have  religion 
excluded  from  education,  declared  that  the  order  of 
the  world  would  remain  unintelligible,  if  one  did  not 
admit  that  a  divine  spirit  has  presumably  willed 
and  conceived  its  plan,  and  a  divine  power  realized 
it.  Yet  however  incomprehensible  and  undefinable, 
God  appears  to  Herbart  as  "the  father  of  man- 
kind " ;  and  it  is  in  the  feeling  of  filial  respect  that 
the  first  elements  of  religious  humility,  of  divine 
veneration  and  adoration,  germinate  in  the  child's 
heart.  "God  is  thought  of  by  the  child  as  the 
father  of  his  father  and  mother." 


52  HERBART 

Not  one  of  the  six  forms  of  interest  just  enumer- 
ated may  be  neglected.  In  schools  of  the  lowest  as 
well  as  of  the  highest  rank,  all  these  sources  of  mental 
activity  must  be  either  simultaneously  or  successively 
drawn  upon ;  each  must  gush  forth  in  a  stream  of 
ideas  that  the  soul  may  be  filled.  Interest  is,  in 
all  kinds  of  study,  a  necessary  condition  of  mental 
fruitfulness  and  value;  and  manifold  interest, — "a 
many-sided  interest"  (Vielseitigkeit  des  Interesse), — 
is  not  less  demanded,  in  order  that  education  may 
reach  its  end  and  correspond  with  the  high  calling 
of  man.  What  Herbart  requires,  is  that  minds 
should  be  broad  and  wide,  awake  to  everything, 
active  in  every  direction,  that  the  intellect  should 
have,  so  to  speak,  "many  sides/'  and  should,  in  con- 
sequence, escape  exclusiveness,  the  great  stumbling- 
block  to  a  complete  plan  of  education. 

This  exclusiveness,  in  other  terms  narrow-minded- 
ness, is  the  inevitable  consequence  of  education  when 
it  develops  only  one  type  of  interest.  It  is  evident, 
for  example,  that  a  mind  will  remain  imperfect  and 
limited  if  it  is  confined  to  speculative  or  religious 
interest  without  room  being  made  for  sympathetic 
interest.  The  understanding  will  then  be  hard,  and 
the  soul  without  heart.  Hence  how  often  must 
we  acknowledge  a  kind  of  insensibility  regarding 
affairs  of  the  world  in  men  whose  religious  devotion 


HERBART  53 

leads  to  asceticism,  or  in  scholars  who  let  themselves 
be  entirely  occupied  in  meditation,  and  who  spare 
no  glances  for  what  is  passing  around  them.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  exigencies  of  practical  life  too 
often  lead  men  to  shut  themselves  up  in  their  pro- 
fession or  trade;  a  grave  error;  a  profession  should 
not  isolate  a  man.  However  much  a  man's  own 
occupations  may  play  the  tyrant  over  him,  he  should 
not  remain  unconcerned  and  a  stranger  to  the  oc- 
cupations of  others.  His  interest  should  extend  to 
the  labors  of  all  his  fellows.  When  an  individual 
wraps  himself  up  in  himself,  a  frost  penetrates  his 
egoistic  soul;  it  then  warms  itself  only  at  one 
hearth,  that  of  personal  well-being.  The  true  destiny 
of  each  man  is  to  take  interest  in  everything  human, 
and,  so  to  speak,  to  bear  and  to  honor  all  humanity 
in  himself. 

Further,  the  mischievous  effect  of  exclusiveness 
does  not  emanate  only  from  the  fact  that  some  of 
the  six  forms  of  interest  are  sacrificed  in  order  that 
the  man  may  devote  himself  entirely  to  the  others. 
Each  of  them  tends  to  develop  special  tastes  in  its 
own  domain,  and  these  lead  to  intellectual  or  moral 
excesses,  against  which  education  cannot  strive  too 
strongly.  Thus  it  may  happen  that  empirical,  or 
speculative,  or  aesthetic  interest  may  be  centred  on 
one  favorite  study,  and  this  causes  all  others  to  be 


54  HERBART 

neglected;  one  may  wish  to  be  only  a  botanist  or 
zoologist,  or  mathematician,  or  metaphysician, 
painter,  or  musician.  Sympathetic  interest,  in  the 
same  way,  may  unite  the  child  only  to  his  parents, 
or  to  his  school  or  comrades.  In  the  same  way, 
again,  social  interest  may  fall  into  regrettable  ex- 
clusiveness,  when  it  inspires  passionate  attachment 
to  any  special  political  party,  to  which  the  man  is 
given  up  to  such  a  degree  that  he  measures  every- 
thing by  its  value  to  the  party.  Finally,  even 
religious  interest  has  a  tendency  also  to  mutilate  the 
soul,  when  it  induces  a  believer  in  religion  to  despise, 
and  even  perhaps  to  hate,  all  those  who  do  not  think 
with  him,  and  who  belong  to  other  faiths. 

Many-sided  interest,  then,  is  the  safeguard  of  a 
broad,  well-balanced  education,  the  only  kind  which 
can  guarantee  fulness  of  mind  and  heart.  It  is  true 
that  if  wide  interests  save  and  preserve  the  soul  from 
partiality  and  narrowness,  they  expose  it  to  another 
danger,  that  of  enfeebling  it  by  dispersion.  Wealth 
may  result  in  weakness:  the  calyx  of  a  flower  is 
broken  by  trying  to  enlarge  it  too  much.  But 
Herbart  thinks  it  will  be  possible  to  steer  clear  of 
this  rock,  if,  through  an  equal  division  of  the  dif- 
ferent interests,  balance  is  maintained,  and  if  we 
can  unify  the  subjects  by  coordinating  them  and 
strictly  systematizing  them. 


HERBART  55 

It  must  be  acknowledged  that  Herbart's  goal  is 
very  high.  What  more  desirable,  if  it  were  possible, 
than  to  call  upon  all  men  to  slake  their  thirst  at 
every  source  of  interest,  that  is  to  say,  to  profit  by 
all  forms  of  instruction,  all  the  subjects  taught? 
But  how  could  one  single  man  accomplish  a  task 
so  immense  ?  Herbart  has  sketched  his  fascinating 
picture  not  from  the  individual,  but  from  humanity 
as  a  whole,  its  collective  activity  exerted  in  different 
directions.  In  practical  life  time  passes  too  rapidly, 
school  life  is  too  short,  professional  necessities  too 
urgent,  to  entirely  escape  the  inevitable  specializa- 
tion and  limitation,  to  indulge  the  hope  in  the  educa- 
tion of  the  individual,  of  attaining  to  the  universality 
of  interests  and  tastes  which  would  be  perfection, 
but  which  remains,  unhappily,  an  inaccessible  ideal. 

However  that  may  be,  interest,  wherever  it  can 
serve  as  agent  in  exciting  mental  activity,  is  subject 
to  certain  delicate  conditions  which  it  is  important 
for  us  to  analyze.  Herbart  proposes,  first  of  all,  a 
new  distinction,  and  a  very  true  one.  There  is  a 
"direct,"  and  an  "indirect"  interest.  Only  the 
first  is  really  fruitful.  Indirect  interest,  which  we 
impose  on  the  child  through  praise  and  blame, 
through  exhortation  and  threats,  through  hope  of 
reward  and  fear  of  punishment,  just  because  it  is 
commanded  and  imposed,  leaves  the  mind  in  a 


OU  H  r j  r\,  H  A  r\.  J. 

relatively  passive  condition.  It  necessitates  an 
effort,  sometimes  a  painful  effort,  and  Herbart  dis- 
likes effort.  It  corresponds  to  the  kind  of  attention 
which  he  improperly  calls  voluntary  (artificial  would 
be  a  more  correct  designation),  and  which,  in  hi3 
opinion,  is  not  the  best.  "  In  the  case  of  children, 
the  desire  to  be  attentive  is  uncertain  and  waver- 
ing, and  in  the  effort  which  they  make  to  maintain 
it,  they  expend  part  of  their  strength,  thus  injuring 
the  smoothness  and  clearness  of  their  perceptions." 
We  must  not  have  recourse  to  indirect  interest, 
except  when  it  is  impossible  to  do  otherwise,  for 
example,  in  oral  lessons  and  in  memory  exercises, 
which  have  no  attraction  in  themselves,  but  are, 
nevertheless,  indispensable ;  for  Herbart  rightly  con- 
siders that  in  every  study  some  parts  must  be 
learnt  by  heart. 

Direct  interest  is  the  true  interest;  it  springs 
spontaneously  from  the  things  themselves,  from  the 
knowledge  which  the  child  gathers  from  his  daily 
experience  at  home  and  in  school,  and  from  interest 
which  wells  up  naturally  from  pleasant  sensations 
and  skilled  instruction;  these  captivate  the  mind 
and  hold  it  prisoner,  while  at  the  same  time  they 
arouse,  inspire,  and  quicken  it. 

With  this  direct  interest  is  united  voluntary  at- 
tention, which  at  bottom  is  nothing  but  curiosity: 


HERBART  57 

the  need  of  understanding,  the  desire  to  see  and 
know.  Only,  in  the  theory  of  Herbart,  curiosity, 
which  the  old  psychology  considered  an  instinct  of 
the  intellect  aspiring  spontaneously  after  knowl- 
edge, becomes  merely  the  result  of  interest.  We  are 
justified  in  saying  it  is  provoked,  rather  than  for 
holding  it  fully  spontaneous. 

Herbart  has  thrown  the  most  vivid  light  on  the 
doctrine  of  attention.  On  the  whole,  he  is  in  agree- 
ment with  modern  psychologists,  who,  like  Ribot, 
maintain  that  the  cause  of  attention  is  always  some 
emotional  condition.  Interest,  in  fact,  which  keeps 
the  mind  alert,  must  be  regarded  as  an  emotional 
condition,  since  it  provides  pleasure  and  renders 
study  agreeable. 

But  this  involuntary  and  natural  attention,  which 
Ribot  says  is  "the  true  and  fundamental  form  of 
attention,"  1  may,  according  to  Herbart,  cover  two 
distinct  forms:  it  is  either  "primitive"  or  "apper- 
ceptive." 

Primitive  attention  depends  on  the  strength  of 
sensations.  The  mind  becomes  the  immediate  prey, 
as  it  were,  of  vivid  sense  impressions.  Hence  Her- 
bart, following  Pestalozzi,  accords  a  large  place 
to  intuition,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  direct  perception 
of  sounds,  colors,  forms.  The  presentation  of  the 

1  Ribot,  The  Psychology  of  Attention,  p.  3. 


58  HERBART 

objects  themselves  is  worth  more  than  an  image 
representing  them,  because  it  strikes  and  stirs  the 
mind  to  a  greater  degree  by  conquering  the  atten- 
tion ;  and  the  image  is  worth  more,  in  its  turn,  than 
a  verbal  description. 

But  in  instruction  the  principal  role  is  played  by 
involuntary  attention  of  the  second  degree,  by  ap- 
perceptive  attention.  This  theory  of  apperception 
is  the  most  interesting  innovation  in  Herbart's  psy- 
chology, and  the  application  he  has  made  of  it  in 
education  is  the  luminous  point  in  his  pedagogy. 
Apperceptive  attention  has  its  origin  not  in  the 
excitement  caused  by  sensations  emanating  from 
the  outside,  but  from  representations  previously 
acquired,  these  being  aroused  by  the  approach  of  a 
new  representation  which  has  points  of  contact 
and  attachment  with  the  former.  Existing  ideas, 
asleep  in  the  soul,  mount  guard,  as  it  were,  around 
consciousness,  ready  on  the  one  hand  to  repulse 
ideas  which  do  not  meet  with  approval,  or  at  least 
to  let  them  pass  by  with  indifference;  on  the  other 
hand,  disposed  to  welcome  those  which  appear 
as  friends,  bearing  marks,  so  to  say,  which  will 
render  intimacy  and  union  easy.  Ideas  already 
assimilated  by  the  mind  prepare  for  new  assimila- 
tions. Like  so  many  magnetized  points  they  at- 
tract those  ideas  which  ask  to  enter  consciousness, 


HERBART  59 

making  it  a  condition  that  these,  in  their  turn,  shall 
be  affinity  between  what  is  already  known  and  what 
is  going  to  be  learnt. 

This  way  of  viewing  mental  progress  and  the 
increase  of  knowledge  is  big  with  pedagogical  con- 
sequences. Apperceptive  attention  should  be  active 
during  the  whole  period  of  study.  It  illuminates 
every  part  of  instruction.  Interest  will  favor  it 
~a'hd  come  to  its  assistance ;  it  is  from  the  theory  of 
apperception,  combined  with  that  of  interest,  that 
Herbart  evolves  the  greater  part  of  his  methods  of 
instruction. 

Thus,  his  first  recommendation  is  that  the  teacher 
should  not  present  to  the  child  anything  quite  new 
to  him.  We  must  not  teach  ex  abrupto.  There 
must  always  be  connective  links  and  relations  be- 
tween what  one  is  now  teaching  and  what  has  been 
previously  taught.  New  impressions,  suddenly 
made,  create  intellectual  disturbance,  produce  violent 
sensations  of  shock.  The  links  of  consciousness  are, 
in  consequence,  broken,  the  movement  of  mind 
checked.  There  is  no  true  instruction  except  when 
a  new  notion  is  introduced  exactly  in  its  right 
place  in  the  series  of  notions  already  fixed,  when 
it  forms  one  of  the  loops  in  the  tissue,  one  of 
the  rings  in  the  chain.  A  mind  cannot  be  dis- 
cerned at  all  amid  a  mere  collection  of  fragmentary 


60  HERBART 

pieces  of  knowledge,  a  heap  of  stones  placed  haphaz- 
ard one  upon  another.  Mind  derives  its  substance 
only  from  the  coherence  of  the  ideas  it  contains ;  it  is 
like  a  mosaic,  of  which  all  the  little  stones  are  closely 
adjusted  and  tightly  compacted  together  to  form  a 
complete  structure. 

Since  old  knowledge  must  blaze  the  pathways  for 
new  knowledge,  the  point  of  departure  for  regular 
instruction  is  none  other  than  the  personal  ex- 
perience of  the  child:  all  that  he  has  learnt  by 
himself,  at  home  or  at  school,  in  his  walks  or  play. 
School  lessons  only  intervene  to  supply  the  gaps  in 
this  slender  and  limited  experience ;  this  it  is  which 
supplies  the  true  starting-point  for  the  teacher's 
efforts.  Knowledge  of  nature  and  of  humanity 
began  for  the  child  in  his  first  manifestations  of 
interest,  empirical  interest  and  sympathetic  interest ; 
and  it  is  by  utilizing  the  beginnings  of  spontaneous 
instruction  that  the  teacher  will  succeed  in  inspiring 
a  taste  for  the  sciences,  insuring  a  full  instruction,  a 
many-sided  and  harmonious  culture:  on  the  one 
hand,  those  natural  sciences  with  which  Herbart 
associated  mathematics,  and  on  the  other,  the  sci- 
ences of  humanity,  history,  languages,  and  literature. 

When  once  school  studies  have  begun,  many  pre- 
cautions should  be  taken  to  facilitate  the  play  of 
apperceptive  attention  and  to  sustain  interest.  The 


HERBART  61 

general  rule,  which  Herbart  holds  to  be  the  chief 
rule,  is  that  the  teacher,  before  beginning  to  instruct, 
should  busy  himself  with  placing  the  minds  of  his 
pupils  within  the  circle  of  ideas  related  to  the  special 
subject  in  hand.  The  pupils  come  to  the  class  in  a 
mood  of  indifference  or  mental  distraction.  They 
are  no  longer  thinking  of  the  studies  of  yesterday; 
they  have  forgotten  them.  At  home  and  in  the 
street  they  have  been  thinking  of  other  things,  and 
during  their  recreation  their  minds  have  been 
wandering.  It  is,  then,  necessary  to  bring  them 
back  to  the  line  of  thought,  to  prepare  them  to 
profit  by  the  lesson.  Their  intellect  is  not  like  a 
clean  slate  upon  which  chalk  will  write  any  ex- 
pressions whatever  without  difficulty.  In  the  first 
place,  let  all  ideas,  all  preoccupations,  be  excluded 
from  their  minds  which  might  bar  the  way  to  the 
knowledge  which  we  are  going  to  put  before  them. 
And  next,  let  us  awaken  those  ideas  which,  since 
they  are  related  to  the  approaching  lesson,  will 
render  a  comprehension  of  it  more  sure  and  easy. 
Representations  which  are  asleep  in  the  mind  are 
like  the  force  which  sleeps  in  an  electric  current: 
turn  a  button,  and  light  leaps  forth.  But  to  cause 
light  to  spring  forth  in  the  intellect,  that  is  to 
say,  to  awaken  interest  and  fix  attention,  is  not  so 
simple  an  operation.  The  master  will  have  recourse 


62  HERBART 

to  various  expedients.  In  the  first  place,  he  will 
take  care  that  the  topic  which  he  selects  is  con- 
nected with  those  that  he  has  treated  previously. 
It  would  be  dangerous  to  jump  suddenly  from  one 
subject  to  another.  Concepts  that  have  taken  pos- 
session of  the  soul  do  not  willingly  yield  their  place 
to  intruders.  In  the  next  place,  in  order  that  the 
connection  which  exists  amongst  the  subjects  studied 
may  be  established  also  in  the  mind  that  studies 
them,  the  master  will  take  pains  from  the  very 
beginning  of  to-day's  lesson  to  recall  the  ideas  pre- 
sented in  yesterday's  lesson.  He  will  announce  and 
recapitulate  beforehand  what  is  going  to  be  said, 
and  also  what  is  going  to  be  read.  Then,  thanks  to 
all  these  precautions,  and  above  all,  if  he  knows 
how  to  express  himself  simply  and  vividly,  as  Her- 
bart  counsels,  in  popular  language,  avoiding  the  use 
of  too  many  new  and  technical  words,  he  will  succeed 
in  arousing  curiosity  and  a  kind  of  expectation. 
Thus  the  intellect  of  the  pupil,  inclined  in  the  right 
direction,  will  be  disposed  to  listen,  and  the  instruc- 
tion, thrown  on  to  a  well-prepared  soil,  will  bear 
the  fruit  which  he  expected. 

The  above  are,  however,  only  the  preliminary  steps 
in  the  scientific  (too  scientific)  system  of  didac- 
tics expounded  by  Herbart.  On  the  ' '  moments  "  and 
"modes"  of  instruction,  on  the  order  of  the  studies, 


HERBART  63 

he  held  views  that  are  extremely  complicated; 
nevertheless,  of  these  we  must  try  to  give  some 
notion.  Seeing  that  these  courses  of  instruction  are 
now  a  hundred  years  old,  they  consist,  no  doubt, 
largely  of  lifeless  abstractions,  of  empty  generaliza- 
tions, set  forth  with  minute  but  fruitless  attention 
to  order.  Yet  sometimes,  when  you  have  cracked 
the  shell  of  the  almond  and  taken  away  its  rough 
envelope,  you  find  solid  and  palatable  fruit,  on 
which  you  feast  with  pleasure. 

According  to  Herbart,  there  are  four  moments  or 
steps  to  pass  in  instruction.  Since  he  himself  felt 
that  the  distinction  he  draws  is  not  very  clear,  he 
varies  and  multiplies  expressions  to  distinguish  these 
stages,  without  finding  possible  fitting  and  exact 
terminology.  Thus,  for  instance,  he  says  that  the 
four  stages  of  instruction  are  clearness,  association, 
systematizationj  and  method.  Elsewhere,  translating 
his  thoughts  into  other  terms,  he  proves  that  teach- 
ing should  successively  show,  associate,  teach,  and 
philosophize.  Some  of  Herbart's  disciples,  little 
satisfied  with  this  terminology,  in  their  turn  hold 
that  distinction  must  be  made  between  intuition, 
comparison,  abstraction  or  generalization,  and  finally, 
application. 

From  another  aspect,  to  complete  the  description  of 
Herbart's  scheme-table,  if  there  are  four  moments  or 


64  HERBART 

periods  in  instruction,  there  are  three  modes,  or  three 
methods,  to  be  used,  more  or  less,  during  each  of  the 
four  moments  of  instruction ;  viz., descriptive  method, 
analytic  method,  and  finally,  synthetic  method. 

Let  us  say  it  at  once :  the  mistake  of  Herbart,  as 
of  all  philosophers  who  carry  abstraction  too  far, 
is  to  desire  to  subject  the  differences  amongst  real 
things  to  an  arbitrary  and  fictitious  unity,  and  in 
consequence  to  establish  amongst  studies  an  in- 
flexible and  unbending  order.  Is  it  quite  certain, 
as  Herbart  believed,  that  all  branches  of  instruction, 
—  instruction  consisting  of  concrete  facts,  such  as 
natural  history  and  geography,  instruction  by  reason- 
ing, such  as  geometry  and  algebra, — lend  themselves 
to  a  uniform  and  unvarying  treatment?  How  can 
the  course  of  instruction  be  always  the  same,  when 
the  roads  to  be  pursued  are  so  different  ?  Since,  for 
the  construction  of  the  sciences  there  are  profoundly 
distinct  methods,  how  can  there  be  only  one  for 
instruction  in  them?  Herbart,  like  Pestalozzi, 
" mechanics"  instruction.  He  plans  the  order  of 
lesson-giving  on  an  invariable  pattern ;  and  by  dint 
of  commands,  prescriptions,  regulations,  he  runs  the 
risk  of  compromising  the  originality  of  the  teacher 
and  the  spontaneity  of  the  scholar,  of  suppressing, 
in  short,  life  and  liberty  in  instruction. 

1.   On  certain  points,  however,  it  is  impossible  not 


HERBART  65 

to  agree  with  Herbart;  for  example,  in  regard  to 
what  concerns  the  first  step  in  instruction,  —  clear- 
ness. We  must  comprehend  in  that  all  the  light 
that  a  direct  view,  —  "intuition,"  in  a  word,  — throws 
on  a  subject.  Intuition  is  the  prelude  necessary  for 
every  study,  and  Herbart  speaks  of  it  with  enthu- 
siasm. Intuition,  he  says,  opens  before  the  child's 
eyes  large  and  vast  spaces :  his  gaze,  when  it  has 
recovered  from  its  first  surprise,  distinguishes,  ana- 
lyzes, associates,  is  active  in  every  way ;  then  it  stops, 
it  rests,  and  then  begins  again.  Touch,  and  the 
other  senses  now  act  in  their  turn.  Sensations  are 
multiplied,  ideas  come  in  a  crowd,  experiences 
begin  and  bring  new  thoughts:  " Everywhere  there 
is  life,  life  full  and  free,  everywhere  delight  in  be- 
holding the  multitude  of  scenes  which  are  unfolding 
themselves  before  the  child." 

But  to  the  free  intuition  of  the  earliest  years 
should  succeed  the  intuition,  so  to  speak,  of  the 
learner,  the  intuition  provoked  by  the  teacher. 
Thus,  in  teaching  history,  we  shall  make  use  of  every 
means  for  representing  to  the  eyes  by  way  of  sensa- 
tion the  things  belonging  to  the  past :  portraits  of 
great  men,  images,  and  pictures,  walks  through 
museums,  visits  to  monuments,  to  ruins  of  ancient 
castles,  not  forgetting  the  reading  of  works  contem- 
poraneous with  the  epoch  studied,  especially  poems, 


66  HERBART 

for  these  illuminate  the  bald  narrative  of  facts.  In 
geography,  the  district  where  teacher  and  scholar 
reside,  and  the  surrounding  neighborhood,  will  be 
the  point  of  departure,  and  from  this,  little  by  little, 
the  horizon  of  the  imagination  will  stretch  right 
across  the  world.  In  physics,  before  any  direct 
teaching,  we  must  cause  the  children  to  observe  the 
simplest  of  the  natural  phenomena;  we  shall  point 
out  to  them  mills  and  the  movements  of  the  clock; 
we  shall  give  them  electric  toys.  In  natural  science 
we  shall  accustom  them  to  make  collections  of  plants 
and  insects;  if  they  cannot  see  the  animals  them- 
selves, we  shall  put  into  their  hands  books  with 
pictures  representing  the  zoological  types;  before 
talking  of  the  tiger,  we  shall  make  them  recall  what 
they  know  of  the  cat.  There  is  no  science,  not  even 
the  science  of  mathematics,  in  which  this  intuitive 
initiation  is  not  both  necessary  and  possible:  we 
shall  let  the  children  practise  measuring  distances, 
counting  objects ;  in  geometry,  we  shall  develop  their 
imagination  by  constructive  plays.  And  this  prepa- 
ration through  the  senses  for  abstract  reasoning  in 
the  future  will  begin  very  early.  Herbart  required 
that  even  in  the  child's  cradle,  different  models 
of  triangles  l  should  be  put  before  his  eyes,  the  form 

1  Herbart  substituted  the  triangle  for  Pestalozzi's  square,  as 
elementary  geometric  form. 


HERBART  67 

being  made  with  brightly  shining  nails,  which  would 
attract  and  fix  his  gaze. 

It  was  perhaps  superfluous  after  Pestalozzi,  it 
certainly  is  so  after  Herbart,  to  recommend  intuition 
and  object-lessons.  But  Herbart  has  this  special 
merit,  that  he  sets  forth  clearly  in  detail  every  ques- 
tion which  he  examines;  he  specifies  everything 
with  remarkable  exactitude.  At  this  point,  for  in- 
stance, he  takes  pains  to  observe  that  on  the  one 
hand,  immediate  intuition  is  always  cut  short  in 
some  direction  or  other,  since  it  is  closed  in  by  the 
limits  of  time  and  space;  it  must,  therefore,  be 
completed  by  description; — and,  on  the  other  hand, 
intuition  is  always  complex,  the  object  being  com- 
posed of  different  elements ;  it  must,  then,  be  rendered 
clear  and  simple  by  analysis. 

Herbart  attaches  great  significance  to  the  method 
of  description.  When  the  child  has  seen  all  that  he 
can  see,  it  is  necessary  for  the  teacher  to  enlarge  the 
circle  of  his  ideas  by  relating  to  him  historical  events, 
by  talking  to  him  of  regions  which  he  cannot  ex- 
plore; he  must  extend  the  child's  experience  in 
space  by  descriptions,  in  time  by  narrations. 
Herbart  far  prefers  oral  exposition  to  the  narrations 
and  written  descriptions  that  abound  in  books, 
provided  that  the  teacher  can  manifest  some  skill 
in  speech.  In  order  that  the  description  of  a  coun- 


68  HERBART 

try,  the  recital  of  an  event,  should  interest  and  lay 
hold  of  the  mind,  the  teacher  must  know  how  to 
put  color  and  life  into  it ;  to  do  this  he  must  borrow 
analogies  and  comparisons  from  objects  known  and 
already  familiar  to  the  child.  Intuitive  elements 
should  mingle,  as  far  as  it  is  possible,  continually  in 
instruction.  We  should  be  careful  to  arrange  for  an 
agreement  and  easy  union  between  what  is  recounted 
or  described  and  the  facts  of  experience.  For  ex- 
ample, in  history  lessons,  we  should  not  carry  the 
imagination  back  to  a  far-distant  past  all  in  a  trice ; 
we  should  cause  it  to  ascend  gradually  to  events 
that  happened  not  very  long  ago,  by  following  the 
life-thread  of  aged  people  who  surround  the  child. 
A  well-given  historical  description  should  cause,  in  a 
way,  an  illusion  of  present  time ;  and  we  must  bring 
about  this  result,  that  the  pupil  imagines  that  he 
really  sees,  that  he  has  before  his  eyes,  the  people 
and  the  events  about  which  we  are  talking  to  him. 
I  Analysis,  like  description,  is  a  mode  of  teaching, 
and  one  cannot  do  without  it  even  during  the  first 
period  of  instruction.  It  is  necessary  for  the  purpose 
of  disentangling  the  confused  mass  or,  so  to  speak, 
the  chaos  of  intuitions  which  the  child  has  accumu- 
lated. However  clear  and  captivating  these  intui- 
tions as  a  matter  of  fact  may  be,  they  are  never 
absolutely  simple;  complex  and  entangled,  they 


HERBART  69 

have  invaded  in  confusion  the  mind  of  the  child,  who 
sees  and  looks,  but  does  not  know  how  to  observe. 
If  impressions  arising  from  the  free  experience  of 
the  child  have  the  advantage  of  being  personal  and 
vivid,  they  have  the  defect  of  following  one  another 
without  order,  of  being  mixed  up,  confused  one 
with  another;  they  float  in  the  mind  at  haphazard, 
without  logical  connection.  It  is  the  province  of 
analytic  instruction  to  remedy  this  twofold  mischief. 
In  the  first  place,  it  is  analysis  which  will  distinguish  ^ 
and  arrange  diverse  intuitions  by  singling  out  the 
objects  from  which  they  have  been  derived;  which 
will  help  the  child  to  make,  so  to  speak,  an  inventory 
of  his  intuitive  knowledge  of  the  wealth  which  he 
has  thus  far  appropriated.  In  the  second  place, 
analysis  will  decompose  each  intuition ;  it  will  make 
out  a  list  of  its  elements,  and  will  enumerate  the 
qualities  even  of  these  elements,  such  as  number 
and  form.  Analytic  instruction  is  then,  as  it  were,  ~~*f*< 
the  first  step  of  instruction;  it  should  introduce" 
every  exposition  of  a  didactic  nature.  The  teacher 
intervenes  then  only  with  a  view  to  leading  his 
pupil  to  see  himself  in  his  own  experiences;  the 
inverse  of  what  takes  place  in  synthetic  instruction, 
when  the  teacher  transmits  knowledge  which  tran- 
scends the  scholar's  own  experience,  either  in  the 
world  of  nature  or  in  the  life  of  mankind.  Let  us 


70  HERBART 

add  that  analysis  has  to  play  more  than  one  role 
in  order  to  unravel  the  bundle  of  primary  intuitions ; 
it  will  be  found  useful  and  necessary  during  all  the 
steps  of  instruction.  However  different  it  is  from 
synthesis,  neither  mode  of  instruction  should  ex- 
clude the  other ;  the  two  should  always  be  associated. 
2.  The  second  "moment  "  of  instruction  is  that  of 
association,  work  in  comparing  which  leads  the  stu- 
dent to  apprehend  the  relations  between  intuitions. 
From  this  time,  the  extension  given  to  experience  by 
descriptions,  thanks  to  experience,  are  broad  and 
numerous;  thanks  to  analysis,  they  are  clearly 
defined.  The  ground  is  thus  well  prepared  for  the 
ascent  to  general  ideas;  these  become  detached  as 
isolated  notions  approach  each  other.  Pestalozzi 
was  little  but  a  "man  of  intuitions/'  incapable  of 
generalizing  with  exactitude.  Herbart,  on  the 
contrary,  said  of  himself  that  he  was  "a  man  of 
concepts";  that  is  to  say,  of  general  notions.  And 
all  instruction  worthy  of  the  name  presupposes  this 
ascent  of  the  intellect  from  the  particular  to  the 
general,  from  intuition  to  concept.  Thought,  in- 
deed, has  no  real  existence,  so  long  as  it  is  limited 
to  gathering  particular  notions;  it  must  lead  to 
the  conception  of  rules,  laws,  principles.  Kant 
had  already  said,  "Concepts  without  percepts  are 
empty,  but  percepts  without  concepts  are  blind." 


HERBART  71 

In  every  concrete  reality  there  is  embodied  an 
abstract  notion  which  must  be  disengaged,  the 
universal  and  essential  must  be  extracted  from 
the  unity  of  individual  things.  The  second  effort  of 
instruction  must  aim  at  forming  such  concepts,  and 
here  again  it  will  not  be  a  question  of  formal  instruc- 
tion. The  best  method  is  that  of  conversation  and 
interrogation.  The  child  will  be  practised  in  finding 
similarities  and  relations,  amongst  the  notions  which 
he  possesses,  for  himself.  If  he  makes  a  mistake, 
and  if  he  lets  himself  be  deceived  by  relations  more 
apparent  than  real,  he  must  be  set  right.  It  is  in 
the  act  of  guiding  him  that  we  shall  lead  him  gradu- 
ally to  conceive  for  himself  abstract  and  general 
ideas. 

3.  It  is  more  troublesome  to  render  an  account 
of  the  third  step  in  instruction,  the  step  described 
as  systematization.  It  would  seem,  however,  that 
Herbart  means  by  that  a  systematic  exposition  given 
by  the  teacher.  Here  the  synthetic  method  at  last 
appears.  Until  now  the  master  has  kept  the  pupil 
contributing,  and  has  confined  himself  to  guiding 
him  in  his  business  of  analysis  and  generalization, 
while  teaching  him  how  to  develop  and  define  what 
was  already  in  his  mind.  Now  he  expounds  at 
greater  length ;  he  teaches  what  the  pupil  could  not 
discover  for  himself.  And  how  much  wise,  practical 


72  HERBART 

advice  might  we  gather  from  the  works  of  Herbart 
on  this  part  of  instruction,  if  space  permitted !  For 
example,  he  puts  the  teacher  of  history  on  his  guard 
against  an  error  common  amongst  beginners,  of  being 
"diffuse,"  of  losing  himself  amongst  details.  In 
geography  he  requires  an  exposition  of  facts  after 
the  manner  of  travellers,  that  is  to  say,  in  exact 
and  vivid  language.  From  all  teachers,  in  short,  he 
asks  vivid  and  attractive  instruction.  Whatever 
may  be  his  confidence,  a  confidence  somewhat 
bigoted  in  the  mechanical  efficiency,  so  to  speak, 
of  the  methods  he  suggests,  he  upholds  the  personal 
qualities  of  the  teacher ;  he  requires  of  him  talent, 
that  he  be  a  good  speaker.  He  knows  how  deadly 
is  the  abuse  of  a  dogmatic  instruction  which  fetters 
the  activity  and  initiative  of  the  child.  Such  instruc- 
tion he  compares  most  ingeniously  to  a  long,  fine, 
and  flexible  thread,  which  is  broken  by  the  striking  of 
the  clock  at  school,  and  knotted  together  again  when 
the  clock  strikes  afresh;  which,  unwinding  slowly 
year  by  year,  fastens  and  binds  the  child,  without 
leaving  him  either  freedom  of  movement  or  repose 
of  mind.  Moreover,  synthetic  instruction  must  be 
employed  with  discretion,  and  it  must  be  made 
living  and  fruitful  by  constant  return  to  perception, 
to  experience.  "To  desire  to  shut  out  experience 
and  social  life,  in  order  to  confine  the  child  in  a  class- 


HERBART  73 

room,  condemning  it  to  find  instruction  from  books 
alone,  or  from  the  dull  lessons  of  a  master,  this," 
said  Herbart  forcibly,  "is  to  affirm  that  one  can 
do  without  the  bright  light  of  the  day  and  be 
satisfied  with  the  feeble  glimmer  of  a  candle." 

4.  The  four  moments  of  instruction  overlap  and 
complete  each  other.  The  last  is  the  inverse  of  the 
first  three,  which  had  the  common  feature  of  pre- 
paring for  and  developing  theoretic  instruction;  it 
brings  us  back  to  practice.  For  the  rest,  one  cannot 
see  why,  in  the  strange  terminology  of  Herbart, 
the  word  "method,"  or  the  term  "to  philosophize," 
is  introduced  into  the  business  at  all.1  The  last 
stage  is,  in  fact,  only  an  affair  of  application  or 
of  practical  exercises.  The  teacher  has  finished  his 
lesson,  he  is  silent.  It  now  behooves  the  pupil  to 
again  do  something,  to  show  by  his  personal  work 
that  he  has  profited  by  the  instruction  which  he  has 
received,  that  he  can  move  at  ease  amongst  the 
notions  now  acquired,  that  he  can  handle  them 
successfully,  that  he  is  ready  to  use  them  profitably. 
He  will  show  this  in  reviewing  them,  in  original  com- 
positions, in  the  solution  of  problems,  or  in  various 

1  It  is  true  that  Herbartians  sometimes  interpret  this  fourth 
operation  in  a  sense  which  may  justify  the  expression  "  to  philoso- 
phize" ;  it  then  consists  in  uniting  the  particular  subject  of  the  les- 
son to  the  general  system,  and  to  the  whole  circle  of  knowledge 
of  the  same  kind. 


74  HERB  ART 

kinds  of  written  exercise.  Here,  as  always,  uniting 
his  theory  with  advice  regarding  technical  details, 
Herbart  tells  us  that  written  exercises  should  not  be 
too  long,  too  easy,  or  too  difficult;  that  we  must  not 
impose  on  our  pupils  too  heavy  tasks  to  be  done  at 
home;  that  compositions  will  be  of  service  only  if 
they  are  based  "on  a  rich  store  of  exact  ideas," 
which  have  already  been  placed  at  the  pupil's 
disposal. 

But  let  us  stop  before  we  exhaust  the  subject. 
We  have  said  enough  to  make  both  the  virtues  and 
defects  of  the  pedagogy  of  Herbart  plain  before  all 
eyes.  We  cannot  deny  to  him  the  merit  of  having 
constructed  a  complete  system,  with  relationships 
well  planned,  full  of  symmetry,  all  the  parts  holding 
together,  leaving  no  gaps.  We  certainly  do  not 
do  justice  to  this  vast  conceptual  whole  when  we 
limit  ourselves  to  presenting  in  a  short  and  dry 
review  only  the  skeleton  of  a  mighty  and  very  Active 
organism.  To  appreciate  Herbart's  pedagogy  ac- 
cording to  its  merits,  it  is  necessary  to  turn  to  the 
original  sources.  But  we  must  yet  recognize  that 
Herbart,  in  his  laborious  effort,  has  sometimes 
taken  great  pains  to  say  over  again  in  systematic 
form  truths  known  to  all  the  world.  It  will  be 
readily  granted  that  in  his  pedagogy  there  are  su- 
perfluous arguments  and  a  measure  of  artificiality. 


HERBART  75 

How  can  we  resign  ourselves  to  thinking  that  such 
a  complicated  method,  such  rigorous  regulations,  are 
the  last  word  in  the  art  of  educating  human  beings, 
that  the  mind  must  be  enmeshed  by  the  inflexible 
threadwork  of  the  manifold  operations  of  the  four 
"moments"  of  instruction,  and  that,  in  a  word,  edu- 
cation must  cost  all  this  ?  Is  it  not  possible  that 
Herbart  has  confused  the  course  of  instruction  with 
the  evolution  of  science  ?  Science,  indeed,  takai  its 
rise  in  experience,  advances  next  to  general  laws, 
and  finally  coordinates  its  generalizations  in  a 
system  embracing  all  science.  But  to  form  and 
instruct  a  mind,  is  that  necessary  which  builds 
science  ?  Notice  besides  that  according  to  Herbart 
the  four  periods  of  instruction  ought  to  reappear 
invariably  in  every  study.  What !  even  in  reading 
and  writing  ?  In  each  of  his  lessons,  and  within  the 
time-limit  of  class  instruction,  the  teacher  must 
pass  always  through  four  successive  series  of  exer- 
cises.1 That  is  absolutely  impossible. 

1  In  one  of  the  very  interesting  discussions  conducted  by  Pro- 
fessor Chabot  with  the  pupils  of  the  normal  schools  of  Lyons,  we 
made  notes  of  a  lesson-plan  prepared  according  to  Herbartian 
method:  Subject  of  the  lesson,  "Courage" :  (1)  First  stage  of  in- 
struction, clear  ideas  or  perceptions :  an  act  of  courage  by  a  pupil 
of  the  school  or  an  inhabitant  of  the  town,  who,  for  example,  has 
thrown  himself  into  the  water  to  effect  a  rescue,  who  has  stopped  a 
horse,  etc.  (2)  Second  "  moment,"  comparison :  other  courageous 
acts  will  be  put  side  by  side  before  the  mental  vision  of  the  pupils 


76  HERBART 

We  have  not  said  all,  far  from  it,  nor  have  we 
pointed  out  all  the  refinements  in  the  pedagogical 
instruments  of  Herbart.  We  have  not  spoken  of 
"reflection"  nor  of  "concentration,"  two  opera- 
tions of  the  mind  which  he  expressly  distinguishes : 
concentration  (Verliefung),  of  which  the  disciples 
of  Herbart  make  great  use,  consists  in  uniting  all 
subordinate  ideas  to  one  chief  idea;  for  instance, 
grouping  all  the  events  of  an  epoch  around  one  great 
historical  name ;  reflection  (Besinnung),  calling  forth 
again  ideas  already  imprisoned  in  consciousness; 
nor  of  ideas  "called  forth"  or  "spontaneous"  ideas, 
the  former  demanding  an  effort,  and  appearing 
chiefly  during  lessons,  the  latter  being  freely  self- 
aroused  in  consciousness;  nor  yet  of  syntheses 
that  unite,  and  syntheses  that  construct.  .  .  . 
We  should  never  end.  Herbart  is  the  father  of  that 
heavy  and  pedantic  methodizing  which  has  caused 

with  this  particular  act,  acts  of  which  they  have  heard  reports, 
those  of  soldiers  on  the  battle-field,  firemen  at  a  fire,  doctors  in  an 
epidemic,  etc.  (3)  Third  "moment,"  system:  courage  in  gen- 
eral is  defined.  (4)  Fourth  "moment,"  method  or  "philosophiz- 
ing" :  courage,  the  particular  virtue,  is  united  with  the  whole  group 
of  virtues;  or,  if  the  other  interpretation  of  the  fourth  stage  of 
instruction,  as  marked  by  Herbart,  is  adopted,  the  pupil  will 
be  asked  how,  in  such  or  such  a  given  circumstance,  he  himself 
would  show  his  courage.  —  See,  also,  in  the  Revue  pedagogique  of 
June  15,  1903,  an  article  in  which  M.  Chabot  explains  the  manner 
in  which  M.  de  Sallwiirk  applies  Herbart' s  method  in  a  liberal 
spirit. 


HERBART  77 

the  production  of  so  many  big,  useless,  and  fruitless 
volumes. 

But,  to  compensate,  how  many  useful  researches 
has  he  not  inspired?  He  has  forced  a  legion  of 
disciples  to  reflect;  some  are  fervent  and  docile, 
others  are  independent,  and  in  their  turn  innovators. 
If  he  has  not  succeeded  in  establishing  a  definite 
system  of  instruction,  he  has  at  least  proved  the  need 
of  one.  If  he  has  applied  and  misapplied  the  ideas 
of  connectedness  and  unity,  that  was  not  in  order 
to  establish  mechanical  teaching ;  it  was,  on  the  con- 
trary, to  penetrate  to  that  well  of  life,  interest,  —  in- 
terest which  can  be  maintained  only  by  connected- 
ness of  ideas.  Advance  in  instruction,  indeed,  is 
measured  by  this :  that  new  ideas  penetrate  deeply 
into  the  mass  of  already  existing  ideas.  Thus, 
although  girt  about,  as  it  were,  with  a  formid- 
able armor  of  logic,  the  theory  of  Herbart  is  sim- 
ple, wise,  and  well-balanced.  He  is,  more  than  all 
else,  a  man  of  a  free  spirit,  who,  within  the  rigid 
lines  of  his  method,  desires  to  introduce  life  and 
movement.  Was  it  not  he  who  said  that  a  man  could 
work  serviceably  in  the  education  of  others  only 
on  condition  of  working  at  the  same  time  at  his  own 
education  ?  He  desires  young  and  enthusiastic  edu- 
cators. Away  with  melancholy  and  morose  disposi- 
tions. Education  is  not  the  business  of  such  men. 


78  HERBART 

Herbart  would  have  been  unfaithful  to  his  prin- 
ciples, and  to  the  idea  of  " manifold  interests/7  if 
he  had  narrowed  the  field  of  studies  open  to  the 
child.  He  did  not  discuss,  like  Herbert  Spencer,  J 
the  question  of  finding  out  "  which  kind  of  knowledge  [ 
is  the  most  worth."  He  did  not  ask  it,  because  he 
admits  that  all  are  necessary  to  form  a  complete 
man.  He  is  already  on  the  side  of  the  theory  of 
an  all-round  education.  And  as  well  as  seeing  in 
this  universality  of  studies  the  condition  of  mental 
equilibrium,  he  has  yet  another"  reason  for  recom- 
mending it,  one  of  the  gravest  reasons:  education 
has  no  right  to  hinder  or  limit  in  advance  a  man's 
future  activity,  and  in  consequence  to  narrow  the 
attention  of  a  child  by  keeping  it  on  special  studies. 

Shall  we  object  that  the  intelligence  of  all  pupils 
does  not  lend  itself  equally  well  to  all  kinds  of  instruc- 
tion? No;  for  Herbart  considers  that  no  study  is 
above  the  reach  of  children,  if  one  knows  how  to 
choose  the  opportune  moment  for  beginning  it,  if 
one  takes  care  to  begin  early,"to  present  it  skilfully, 
according  to  the  law  of  evolution  natural  to  the 
mind.  It  is  an  illusion  to  believe,  for  instance,  that 
mathematical  aptitude  is  naturally  more  rare  than 
any\pther.  It  is  so,  in  fact,  because  preparatory 
elementary  work  has  been  too  much  delayed  and 
neglected. 


HERBART  79 

Every  subject,  then,  should  be  taught,  as 
Comenius  already  desired,  and  all  subjects  to  all 
children  in  all  schools.  The  same  subjects  for  in- 
struction will  appear  on  the  programme  —  except 
Latin  and  Greek  —  in  primary  schools  as  in  the 
schools  for  secondary  instruction.  There  should  be 
no  difference  in  the  nature  of  the  studies  from  one 
grade  to  another  of  education;  that  should  occur 
only  in  their  proportion.  The  same  things  should  be 
taught  everywhere,  but  in  the  school  only  the  surface 
be  skimmed;  in  the  gymasium  (grammar  or  high 
school)  the  depths  should  be  sounded. 

The  concrete,  positive  sciences,  —  realien,  the 
Germans  call  them,  —  the  humanities,  equally  with 
the  natural  sciences,  are  the  basis  of  instruction. 
The  study  of  ancient  languages  is  not  an  essential 
element.  Herbart  certainly  was  a  lover  of  Greek;  it 
is  known  that  he  put  the  Odyssey  into  the  hands  of 
children  at  ten  years  of  age,  that  he  used  it  as  a 
first  reading  book,  and  that  he  did  not  believe  that 
there  was  a  better  means  of  forming  the  mind  than 
to  continue  this  study  for  ten  months  or  more.1 
He  liked  Latin  less,  the  writers  of  Rome  not  being 
suitable,  in  his  opinion,  to  initiate  the  child  into  the 
classic  ages.  This  initiation  into  classic  ages  weighed 

1 "  It  took  us  a  year  and  a  half  to  read  the  Odyssey."  See 
the  reports  to  M.  de  Steiger,  1797-1798. 


80  HERBART 

with  him  far  more  than  a  philological  study  of  dead 
languages:  " Latin  and  Greek/' he  said,  "a  source 
of  torment  for  pupils,  a  necessary  evil  in  secondary 
schools  now,  ought  to  disappear  entirely  from  the 
curriculum  of  the  schools,  if  we  could  acquire  with- 
out knowing  these  languages  an  exact  view,  a  living 
representation,  of  antiquity."  Without  doubt,  the 
classic  writings  are  the  immortal  models  of  beauty, 
purity,  and  style,  and  the  progress  or  decadence  of 
modern  languages  is  linked  with  the  maintenance 
or  suppression  of  the  study  of  ancient  languages. 
But  Herbart  at  the  same  time  called  attention  to 
the  fact  that  this  is  not  the  business  of  the  school, 
that  it  does  not  fall  to  most  men  to  look  after  the 
fate  of  their  language,  and  that  the  aim  of  school 
studies  is  only  to  attend  to  the  function  of  literature. 
Greco-Latin  studies  will  be,  then,  in  the  future, 
only  the  favorite  task  of  a  few  privileged  educators. 
"Let  us  put  aside  the  superstitious  belief  that  to  be 
really  cultivated  a  modern  man  must  be  able  to 
decipher  Greek  and  Latin  texts."  The  labor 
required  by  a  study  is  rewarded  for  its  pains  only 
in  the  case  of  those  who  display  a  marked  apti- 
tude and  a  firm  intention  of  reaching  a  high  degree 
of  culture.  "Also,  it  is  necessary  to  begin  this 
labor  early,  at  seven  or  eight  years  of  age,  before 
the  circle  of  ideas  closes."  Languages,  ancient  or 


H  K/ryriA  H-  L  81 

modern,  all  systems  of  symbols,  are  a  burden  in 
teaching;  we  should  endeavor  to  lighten  it  by 
interest  in  the  things  which  the  signs  represent. 
Greek  should  be  studied  before  Latin,  —  a  con- 
sequence of  the  principle  that  pedagogical  evolution 
should  correspond  to  the  historical.  For  the  same 
reason,  modern  languages  will  not  be  learnt  before 
ancient:  "this  would  be  to  put  the  cart  before  the 
horse."  The  study  of  texts  should  be  connected 
with  the  study  of  ancient  history;  this  is  the  only 
possible  basis  for  a  really  pedagogical  study  of 
Latin  and  Greek,  —  a  consequence  of  the  principle 
of  connectedness  amongst  ideas.  And  thus  the  old 
humanities,  subjects  which  are  not  necessary  to 
every  one,  but  which  will  remain  the  ideal  of  a  few, 
should  be  given  their  right  place.  No  one  has 
felt  more  fully  the  value  of  classic  culture  than  he 
who,  with  deep  insight,  said :  "Who,  then,  has  really 
received  classic  culture?  Only  those  who  praise  it. 
.  .  .  For  it  could  not  be  granted  that  those  who 
malign  classic  culture  can  claim  to  have  received  it." 


IV 

"THE  worth  of  a  man,"  said  Herbart,  "is  measured 
not  by  what  he  knows,  but  what  he  desires  to  do." 
That  is  the  same  as  saying  that  moral  culture,  cul- 
ture that  forms  the  will,  is  still  more  important  than 
intellectual  culture,  the  source  of  knowledge.  In- 
struction is  of  value  only  when  it  tends  to  moral 
ends.  The  moral  idea  ought  to  dominate  all  in- 
struction. Virf.np  in  flp  aiipremfl  end  of  education. 

Now,  in  the  system  of  Herbart,  instruction  and 
education  are  found  commingled,  united  in  one. 
Will  depends  on  knowledge.  If  each  act  of  the  will 
is  only  an  idea  in  action,  an  idea  energized  (idee- 
force)  according  to  the  expression  dear  to  M.  Fouill6e, 
moral  character  itself  is  only  a  collection,  a  group- 
ing, of  ideas  that  tend  to  become  active.  Whoever 
forms  enlightened  men,  forms  at  the  same  time 
moral  and  virtuous  men.  Thinking  rightly  is  the 
source  of  willing  and  acting  rightly. 

Moral  culture  does  not  the  less  lay  claim  to 
special  attention,  and  Herbart  has  considered  it 
apart  in  a  series  of  chapters  in  which  he  scatters 

82 


HERBART  83 

delicate  observations  and  judicious  counsel  from 
full  hands.  Herbart,  who  had  a  blind  faith  in  his 
theories  and  systematic  notions,  is  most  valued  by 
us  for  detail  in  special  subjects  and  wealth  of  prac- 
tical observations.  ^Tn  trying  to  summarize  his 
views,  we  are  liable  to  distort  them.  We  ought  to  be 
able  to  cite  these  pages,  so  profoundly  thought  out 
in  their  entirety;  for  in  them  the  question  of  moral 
education  is  discussed  in  all  its  heights  and  depths  ; 
and  the  goodness  of  heart  of  a  talented  thinker  is 
revealed  with  a  sweet  seriousness. 

Moral  as  well  as  intellectual  culture  has  its  point 
of  departure  in  the  experience  of  the  child.  Her- 
bart, without  doubt,  has  no  wish  for  the  "  natural 
man  "  of  Rousseau's  type.  He  makes  the  just  obser- 
vation that  the  word  " nature"  is  vague  and  equivo- 
cal, since  both  stoics  and  epicureans  could  appeal  to 
it  in  theories  of  morals  quite  opposed  to  each  other. 
But  he  still  less  desires  a  " school  man,"  one  who 
has  had  no  contact  with  moral  realities,  who  has  not 
steeped  his  soul  in  the  relations  of  social  life.  "  The 
world  and  nature  do  much  more  for  the  pupil  than 
education,  properly  so  called."  The  moral  experi- 
ences of  the  child,  like  his  intellectual  experience, 
is  narrow  and  limited.  The  relations  that  he  can 
establish  within  the  circle  of  this  family  or  the  school 
are  necessarily  inadequate;  they  dispose  him  to 


84  HERBART 

develop  only  one  sentiment,  to  the  exclusion  of  all 
others,  love  of  family  at  the  expense  of  love  of 
country,  or  the  latter  at  the  expense  of  love  of 
humanity.  It  is  indispensable,  then,  that  instruction 
should  widen  the  field  of  experience,  and  that  a 
" many-sided  interest"  should  help  to  enlarge  the 
heart,  fight  the  tendency  toward  social  exclusiveness, 
and  form  a  full  and  complete  soul.  And  again, 
this  is  also  necessary  to  correct  the  bad  effects  of 
experience,  to  provide  a  remedy  for  the  egoistic 
feelings,  antipathies,  aversions,  which  may  be 
bred  by  the  chances  of  life  in  school  and  family, 
for  the  scars  and  bruises,  caused  not  seldom  by  the 
earliest  relations  of  the  child  with  its  parents  or 
tyrannical  masters,  and  which  hinder  the  upspring- 
ing  of  sympathetic  interest. 

But  before  moral  culture  can  begin  with  advan- 
tage, there  is  a  preparatory  and  provisional  period, 
that  of  the  " control  of  children"  (Reg wrung  der 
Kinder),  of  what  is  called  by  us  discipline.1  For- 
merly, discipline  might  have  been  considered  as  the 
whole  law  of  education,  in  days  when  teachers 
believed  they  had  only  to  oppress  and  constrain 
dispositions  rebellious  and  wholly  bad.  Herbart, 
who  considers  that  wickedness  in  children  proceeds 

1  Let  us  note  that  Herbart  reserves  the  word  "  discipline  "  (Zucht) 
to  designate  "  moral  culture." 


HERBART  85 

for  the  most  part  from  defects  in  parents,  and  who 
aspires  to  form  an  inner  man  capable  of  self-govern- 
ment, permits  discipline  and  coercive  measures  only 
during  early  years.  It  should  last  only  for  a  season, 
and  should  give  place  as  soon  as  possible  to  real 
education,  for  which  it  should,  moreover,  prepare. 
Its  end  is  to  maintain  provisional  order.  It  pre- 
vents the  child  from  injuring  itself,  and  from  being 
unbearable  to  others.  It  imposes  passive  sub- 
mission while  awaiting  the  birth  of  the  will.  It  is 
necessary  because  of  the  petulance  and  lack  of  re- 
flection of  young  children.  It  renders  the  first 
instruction  possible;  for  one  cannot  instruct  in- 
subordinate and  undisciplined  children.  It  works 
for  the  present ;  education  works  for  the  future^ 

The  discipline  recommended  by  Herbart  is  in  no 
way  severe  or  oppressive.  It  should  be  already 
steeped  in  the  liberal  spirit  that  will  animate  educa- 
tion. Herbart,  we  may  be  certain,  was  a  kind, 
sweet-tempered,  and  patient  genius.  If  he  consents 
to  authorize  threats,  watching,  punishment,  he 
introduces  into  the  application  of  these  disciplinary 
agencies  all  kinds  of  restrictions,  which  soften  their 
severity  and  guard  the  spontaneity  of  the  child. 
Upon  occasion,  however,  he  can  advise  vigorous 
though  not  angry  repression,  when,  for  instance,  it  is 
a  question  of  falsehood,  of  which  he  had  a  horror. 


86  HERBART 

Threats,  —  he  recognized  that  they  are  often 
ineffective,  even  when  they  are  regularly  followed 
by  deeds,  and  parents  or  masters  do  not,  before  the 
tears  or  entreaties  of  the  child,  weakly  retract  them. 
And  above  all,  he  desires  that  refusals  and  pro- 
hibitions be  reduced  to  a  strict  minimum.  They 
should  leave  a  free  field  for  the  need  of  activity  in 
the  child,  on  every  occasion  when  no  danger  is  in- 
curred by  giving  him  a  loose  rein. 

Superintendence,  —  he  permits  that,  too,  but  with 
all  sorts  of  restrictions.  At  the  bottom  he  dislikes 
it.  "I  dare  hardly  say  what  I  think  about  it." 
He  will  have  no  companion,  no  severe  tutor  who 
follows  the  child  step  by  step,  who  holds  him  like 
a  slave  by  a  chain,  who  robs  the  child  of  all  liberty 
by  sacrificing  to  him  his  own.  Excess  of  superin- 
tendence has,  besides,  this  drawback,  —  that  it 
stimulates  the  child  to  employ  trickery  and  subter- 
fuge. He  recalled  that  during  the  years  of  his  own 
tutorship  he  had  been  merely  the  guide  and  benevo- 
lent friend  to  his  pupils,  that  he  had  placed  confi- 
dence in  them,  and  never  hesitated  to  leave  them  to 
themselves,  to  their  games  and  sports.  " Children/7 
he  said,  "must  be  exposed  to  danger,  if  one  wants 
them  to  become  men."  Those  who growup  under  the 
tyranny  of  a  superintendence  that  is  strict,  constant, 
and  indiscreet,  will  possess  neither  courage  nor  self- 


HERBART  87 

reliance.  They  will  lack  spirit  and  initiative. 
The  strong,  firm  character  which  we  should  develop, 
and  the  formation  of  which  is  the  essential  end  of 
moral  culture,  is  prepared  only  by  action,  by  ex- 
ercise of  the  will.  Discipline,  then,  must  not  make 
an  improper  use  of  police-like  superintendence ;  it 
must  be  prudent,  do  nothing  which  will  hinder  the 
earliest  manifestations  of  the  will,  and  finally,  while 
governing  the  child,  it  must  prepare  him  to  govern 
himself. 

Punishments,  —  Herbart  thinks  them  necessary. 
But  he  distinguishes  between  several  kinds :  those 
which  are  the  instruments  of  government,  others 
which  are  of  use  still  after  a  liberal  education  has 
begun.  There  are,  in  the  first  place,  disciplinary 
punishments,  those  which  insure  order,  which  oblige 
children  to  remain  quiet:  all  sorts  of  privations, 
privations  of  food,  liberty,  and  even  corporal  chas- 
tisement. The  Germans  have  never  had  much 
delicacy  about  this  matter,  and  Herbart  does  not 
absolutely  reject  the  old  customs.  The  rod  and 
hands  tied  behind  the  back  do  not  shock  him. 
"It  is  not  bad  for  a  child  to  recall  that  he  was 
whipped  when  little."  But  to  purely  disciplinary 
corrections  should  follow  those  which  have  educative 
virtue,  and  which  will  render  the  child  prudent  by 
habituating  him  to  calculate  the  consequences  of  his 


88  HERBART 

acts.  These  are  the  punishments  which  Herbart 
calls  "pedagogic";  and  it  is  worth  noting  that  the 
famous  theory  of  Herbert  Spencer  on  natural 
punishment,  the  consequences  and  reactions  of  our 
acts,  exists  already  in  germ  in  the  writings  of  Her- 
bart.1 The  gormand  who  has  eaten  too  many 
dainties  should  take  a  bitter  medicine  to  cure  his 
indigestion.  The  neglectful  child  who  has  soiled  his 
Sunday  garments  should  be  obliged  to  do  without 
them.  .  .  .  There  is,  finally,  a  third  and  higher 
kind  of  punishment,  in  which  a  moral  idea  appears : 
punishment  which  the  culprit  accepts,  when  he  is  re- 
pentant, as  a  deserved  expiation  of  the  sin  committed. 
Herbart,  to  tell  the  truth,  considers  discipline 
only  as  a  necessary  evil ;  the  proof  of  this  is  that,  if  it 
were  possible,  he  would  remove  the  burden  of  it  from 
the  educator.  It  is  an  inferior  duty,  not  suitable  to 
the  high  calling  of  men  who  take  charge  of  the  instruc- 
tion of  the  child.  The  educator  is,  in  his  way,  an 
artist ;  and  if  a  painter,  a  sculptor,  can  only  rise  to 

1  This  is  fresh  evidence  of  the  regrettable  condition  that  in  the 
science  of  education  there  is  no  understanding,  no  continuity  of 
effort  amongst  the  workers  of  different  nationality,  the  conse- 
quence being  that  one  of  them  believes  he  has  discovered  a  theory 
that  is  more  than  half  a  century  old.  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  in 
writing  to  me,  has  stated  that  before  composing  his  remarkable 
essay,  he  had  read  neither  the  Entile  of  Rousseau,  nor  any  work  on 
education  except  a  bad  commentary  by  the  Englishman,  "  Biber, " 
on  Pestalozzi. 


HERBART  89 

perfection  by  means  of  a  concentrated  force  of  genius, 
entirely  absorbed  in  its  art,  freed  from  all  the  ac- 
cessory and  inferior  work  of  his  trade;  so  it  is 
desirable  that  a  teacher  whose  mission  it  is  to  educate 
the  inner  being  of  the  child,  should  not  have  to  dis- 
sipate a  part  of  his  mental  power  and  energy  on  the 
cares  and  anxieties  of  discipline. 

The  government  of  children  approaches  to  moral 
education  when  it  is  based  upon  and  supported  by 
"authority"  and  "affection":  two  auxiliaries  the 
action  of  which  is  so  much  the  more  important, 
since  by  permeating  discipline  they  tend  to  render  it 
useless.  That  is,  again,  another  reason  for  preferring 
domestic  to  public  education. 

What  teacher  could  rival  parents,  who  would  lay 
claim  to  excel  or  even  equal  them  in  matters  of 
authority  and  affection?  If  authority  is  naturally 
vested  in  the  father,  does  not  the  mother  claim  first 
place  in  affection,  "the  mother  who,  at  the  price  of 
endless  sacrifices,  succeeds  in  discovering  the  needs 
of  her  child  better  than  any  one  else  could  do,  who 
communicates  with  him  in  his  first  speech,  of  which 
she  alone  has  the  secret,  who,  favored  by  the  re- 
finement of  her  feminine  nature,  knows  how  to  find 
the  familiar  accent  which  harmonizes  with  the  tender 
feelings  of  the  child,  and  whose  gentle  control,  if  it 
is  not  clumsily  exerted,  never  fails  of  its  end"  ? 


90  HERBART 

From  a  stranger,  from  any  educator  whatever, 
it  is  evidently  not  possible  to  ask  the  same  love,  the 
same  penetrating  force  of  affection.  How  could  the 
passing  teacher  exert  the  same  ascendency  over  his 
pupils  as  the  abiding  family,  which  from  birth  has 
wrapped  the  child  in  tenderness,  in  a  sustained 
bond  of  feeling  and  habit  ?  Authority  and  love  are 
not  the  less  at  school  than  at  home  precious  co- 
workers  with  discipline,  so  far  as  the  school  can 
make  use  of  them,  and  they  will  endure,  forming  a 
solid  base  for  true  education  and  moral  culture. 

The  period  arrives,  in  fact,  —  and  we  hasten 
toward  it, — when  government  should  disappear; 
or  at  least  should  relax  its  imperious  authority,  in 
order  to  give  place  to  an  education  which  will  pre- 
pare the  child  to  direct  himself.  It  is  here  that  Her- 
bart  reaches  the  culminating  point  of  his  pedagogical 
doctrine,  the  part  that  is  most  essential  and  impor- 
tant in  his  system.  The  child  should  be  freed  as 
soon  as  possible  from  the  swaddling-clothes  which 
outside  influences  have  woven,  in  order  that  he  may 
become  an  autonomous  being,  a  moral  person,  who 
draws  from  internal  forces  his  rules  of  conduct  and 
moral  laws,  without  having,  henceforth,  need  to  ask 
them  from  external  guardians.  " Education  would 
be  a  tyranny  if  it  did  not  lead  toward  freedom." 

But  just  as  it  was  impossible  to  understand  Her- 


HERBART  91 

hart's  theory  of  instruction  without  a  preparatory 
review  of  his  psychology,  so  a  glance  at  the  principles 
of  his  ethics  is  indispensable  for  finding  the  key  to 
his  pedagogy  of  morality.1 

Herbart  moralizes  outside  the  beaten  paths. 
His  moral  theories  are  exceedingly  personal,  closely 
associated,  in  fact,  with  his  system  as  a  whole.  He 
aspired,  he  says,  to  continue  and  complete  the  prac- 
tical philosophy  of  Kant,  and  while  doing  so  to  cor- 
rect it ;  in  reality  he  demolishes  it,  leaving  nothing 
standing.  His  ethics,  in  fact,  is  a  morality  with- 
out free  will,  a  morality  without  obligation.  He 
admits  neither  transcendental  liberty,  nor  the  cate- 
gorical imperative,  the  very  foundations  of  morality 
such  as  was  conceived  by  the  author  of  The  Criticism 
of  the  Practical  Reason.  Transcendental  liberty, 
considered  from  the  pedagogical  point  of  view  alone, 
and  understood  not  purely  as  a  dream,  renders  all 
education  useless  and  impossible,  just  as  much 
as  an  absolute  fatalism  would  do.  It  may  be 
taken  for  granted  that  the  fatalism  of  Spinoza,  since 
it  views  all  things  as  ruled  a  priori  by  the  decrees  of 
an  inexorable  destiny,  condemns  to  failure  all  educa- 
tional effort.  But  it  is  interesting  in  other  respects 

1  See  the  remarkable  articles  of  M.  Dereux :  "  On  the  foundations 
of  morality  according  to  Herbart,"  in  the  Critique  philosophique, 
for  December,  1888,  and  January,  March,  and  May,  1889. 


92  HERBART 

to  prove  that  Kant,  too,  with  his  strange  conception 
of  a  super-sense  freedom,  independent  of  experience, 
active  before  time  began  and  beyond  time,  sterilizes 
and  paralyzes  the  power  of  education.  How  affect 
a  being  whose  destiny  has  been  fixed  beforehand  by  a 
mysterious  will,  by  a  miraculous  coup  d'etat,  causing 
in  advance  a  break  in  empirical  determinism,  in 
the  chain  of  human  actions?  When  a  man 
enters  into  this  world  he  has  already  voted  for 
good  or  evil  in  his  future  actions.  Nothing  will  be 
able  to  influence  him.  The  man  who  thinks  he  can 
be  made  better  is  only  dreaming.  One  man  can 
no  longer  affect  another;  instruction,  warning,  pun- 
ishments,—  these  accomplish  nothing.  If,  then, 
transcendental  liberty  has  the  power  to  modify  a 
man's  acts,  independently  of  all  reason  and  well- 
reflected  motives,  it  is  clear  that  the  characteristic 
feature  of  the  ethics  of  Kant  is  nothing  but  em- 
pirical determinism,  hanging,  one  knows  not  how, 
fronTa  first  postulate  of  metaphysical  freedom ;  and 
consequently  it  destroys  all  attempts  at  reform  and 
moral  progress ;  it  denies  the  possibility  of  education. 
Herbart,  a  realist  in  philosophy,  could  not  admit 
in  any  way  such  an  arbitrary  and  unreal  hypothesis 
as  that  of  transcendental  liberty.  Neither  is  one 
surprised  that  he  refuses  to  bow  down  before  the 
categorical  imperative  of  Kant,  and,  in  general, 


HERBART  93 

before  any  idea  of  moral  obligation.  To  believe 
in  obligation,  that  is  to  say,  in  a  command  addressed 
by  reason  to  the  will,  we  must  begin  by  believing  in 
reason  itself ;  for  the  same  argument  there  must  also 
be  a  will.  Now,  we  know  that  the  psychology  of 
Herbart  does  not  admit  any  primitive  faculty; 
reason  and  a  moral  conscience  he  excludes  as  much 
as  intellect  and  sensibility;  there  is  nothing  but  a 
confused  mass  of  representations,  and,  as  it  were, 
a  dust-cloud  of  ideas,  the  confusion  of  which  allows 
'the  construction  of  mental  unity,  a  form  of  activity 
not  granted  by  nature.  The  child,  then,  is  bor 
without  moral  ideas,  as  without  will.  Practical  /  / 
reason,  as  well  as  theoretical  reason,  arises  gradually  / 
from  objects  represented  in  consciousness,  and  from 
the  relation  of  these  objects.  It  is  in  no  way  a  first 
principle,  a  fundamental  law.  It  is  deduced  and 
derived.  In  consequence,  duty  (of  this  Herbart 
does  not  even  pronounce  the  name)  is  no  longer  the 
sovereign  rule  of  our  actions,  established  on  an  idea 
of  the  good.  Good  in  itself  does  not  exist.  Moral- 
ity, like  understanding  as  a  whole,  is  only  the  re-  ' 
sultant  from  a  series  of  operations,  the  product  of 
experience. 

It  would  seem,  however,  at  the  first  glance,  that 
Herbart  admits  a  different  conception.  He  speaks 
of  a  moral  ideal,  and  he  distinguishes  five  ideas  as 


94  HERBART 

being  the  elements  of  it.  But  these  ideas,  as  we 
shall  see,  are  neither  anterior  nor  superior  to  ex- 
perience; they  spring  from  it.  They  are  the  effect 
rather  than  the  cause  of  morality.  It  is  not  they 
which  determine  us  to  be  virtuous ;  but  it  is  because 
we  are  virtuous  that  they  take  shape  in  the  mind. 
That  is  to  say,  that  a  good  man  forms  a  conception 
of  them  as  the  ideal  standard  for  his  actions,  by  a 
sort  of  abstraction  from  his  virtues;  but  it  is  not 
they  which  form  the  good  man. 

Let  us  enumerate  and  define  these  five  moral 
ideas,  which  Herbart  separates  absolutely  from  one 
another,  and  which  he  considers  irreducible.  They 
are,  indeed,  not  simple  notions.  In  Herbart's  phi- 
losophy there  is  nothing  simple  except  the  soul, 
which  is  unknowable  and  inert.  Everywhere  there 
is  connection,  relation,  function.  Thus  the  first 
moral  idea,  inner  liberty,  is  only  a  relation  between 
the  judgment  and  will  when  they  agree.  A  desire 
is  conceived;  the  judgment  approves  of  it;  con- 
sciousness of  this  harmony  is  liberty,  as  Herbart  un- 
derstood it :  not  an  independent  power  which  weighs 
different  motives  and  selects,  but  simply  the  pressure 
exerted  by  one  idea  over  another  to  bring  about  an 
action.  The  mind  is  then  at  peace  with  itself.  The 
man  who  acts  deliberately  in  conformity  with  his 
thoughts,  is  free  inwardly  and  subjectively. 


HERBART  95 

The  notion  of  perfection  takes  the  second  place,  and 
is  again  only  a  relation  between  two  ideas,  two  acts 
of  the  will,  of  which  one  surpasses  the  other  in  no- 
bility because  it  is  the  better  of  the  two ;  in  intensity, 
if  it  is  the  stronger;  in  extension,  if  it  comprehends 
a  greater  number  of  objects;  finally,  in  concentra- 
tion, if  it  firmly  coordinates  this  diversity  of  objects. 
A  mathematical  bent  of  mind  always  directed 
the  speculations  of  Herbart,  and  moral  perfection, 
one  can  see,  is  for  him  only  a  question  of  quantity, 
we  were  going  to  say  of  dimensions,  in  the  amount 
and  force  of  will  power. 

However  that  may  be,  the  first  two  moral  notions 
concern  only  the  relation  between  acts  of  "will  in  one 
and  the  same  person ;  they  belong  to  what  is  known 
as  individual  morality;  they  concern  personal 
progress,  of  which  the  maxim  is,  "Make  yourself 
perfect."  The  three  other  ideas  — good-will,  law,  and 
justice — regard,  on  the  contrary,  social  morality; 
they  presuppose  will  relationships  between  two  or 
more  different  persons.  Let  us  place  ourselves  in  the 
presence  of  our  kind;  if  our  own  will  conforms 
to  the  will  of  others,  if  we  desire  that  this  external 
will  finds  satisfaction  and  reaches  its  end,  we  have 
then  a  kind  or  benevolent  notion.  If  of  two  wills 
desiring  the  same  object  neither  will  yield,  there  is 
a  conflict;  this  conflict  is  disagreeable,  contrary  to 


96  HERBART 

order ;  it  must  be  avoided,  the  struggle  ended ;  that 
is  the  notion  of  law  (droit).  Finally,  if  the  strife  has 
not  been  adjusted,  if  one  person  has  transgressed  his 
rights,  the  order  that  has  been  disturbed  and  injured 
must  be  restored,  and  agreement  between  the  wills 
be  reestablished,  thanks  to  the  sanctions  and  com- 
pensations which  render  to  each  what  belongs  to 
him :  that  is  the  notion  of  justice. 
.  We  need  not  delay  to  criticise  this  particular 
classification  of  moral  concepts:  what  is  alone  of 
importance  to  us,  is  to  prove  that  they  claim  in  no 
way  to  be  the  first  principles  of  moral  conduct. 
They  do  not  derive  their  force  from  a  direct  and 
original  revelation  to  consciousness.  If  one  might 
compare  them  with  the  " Ideas"  of  Plato,  for  they 
also  are  models  or  examples  of  moral  beauty,  they 
are  not  reminiscences,  reflections  of  a  world  of  super- 
sensible realities.  They  are  purely  mental  construc- 
tions, and  follow  upon  action  more  than  they  deter- 
mine it.  Just  as  representations,  when  associated, 
form  the  intellect,  so  acts  of  will,  when  repeated, 
construct  the  moral  ideal.  There  is  perfect  par- 
allelism between  the  development  of  theoretic  reason 
and  of  practical  reason.  We  begin  by  action ;  then 
we  reflect,  and  from  reflection  come  the  great  ideas 
which  henceforth  give  direction  to  human  conduct. 
Once  conceived,  in  fact,  they  contribute  to  en- 


97 

lighten  our  judgment,  and  in  a  certain  measure  they 
become  the  agents  of  moral  culture.  They  are 
lighthouses  which  illuminate  the  pathway  of  life  as 
long  as  a  man  acts ;  they  do  not  shine  when  he  starts, 
but  their  light  accompanies  humanity  on  its  march. 
Since  it  is  not  in  moral  ideas,  as  Herbart  under- 
stands them,  that  we  must  seek  the  principle  of 
virtue,  where  shall  we,  then,  find  it?  He  replies 
without  hesitation,  in  an  aesthetic  necessity.  In  his 
view,  the  good  and  the  beautiful  are  not  sep- 
arable. A  moral  judgment  is  an  aesthetic  judg- 
ment. That  is  a  singular  conception,  which  was 
suggested  to  Herbart,  so  it  would  seem,  by  the 
theory  of  music.  He  was  a  good  musician,  as  we 
have  already  said,  and  it  was  the  study  of  sound- 
relationships  which  in  part  suggested  to  him  his 
theory  of  the  relationship  of  acts  of  will.  According 
to  him,  aesthetic  judgments  are  absolute.  They 
do  not  require  demonstration.  They  assert  them- 
selves with  complete  authority.  "If  we  ask  a  pro- 
fessor of  counterpoint  for  a  demonstration  of  the 
beauty  of  a  sound,  he  could  only  laugh,  or  perhaps 
pity  the  stupid  ears  which  have  not  already  ap- 
preciated it."  Moral  judgments,  since  they  are 
aesthetic,  have  the  same  character.  They  need  only 
show  themselves  to  secure  our  approval,  to  exercise 
over  our  resolutions  a  gentle  constraint.  They  per- 


98  HERBART 

suade  at  once.  "As  soon  as  an  aesthetic  judgment 
springs  up  in  the  soul,  it  is  felt  as  a  force.  This  is 
the  gentle  pressure  that  mankind  calls  conscience." 

We  are  explaining  Herbart's  theory,  not  criticising 
it.  To  how  many  objections  is  he  not  exposing  him- 
self in  attributing  to  taste,  to  aesthetic  judgment, 
the  authority  which  his  system  did  not  permit  him 
to  require  from  moral  law,  from  a  command  of  the 
reason,  resting'upon  a  notion  of  the  good,  or  of  duty  ? 
It  will  suffice  to  put  forward  only  one  such  objection : 
that  this  authority  appears  very  precarious,  very 
fragile,  and  without  any  assured  efficacy.  How 
could  a  judgment  pronounced  by  taste  become 
a  principle  of  obligation?  How  could  an  appre- 
ciation of  beauty  suffice  to  determine  action? 

Still,  accepting  Herbart's  theory  as  it  stands,  more 
ingenious  than  solid,  let  us  try  to  understand  how 
this  theory  of  a  morality  interchangeable  with 
aesthetics,  can  be  reconciled  with  the  great  principle 
of  educative  instruction.  Moral  education,  let  us 
not  forget,  is  in  direct  and  strict  correlation  with 
intellectual  education.  In  order,  then,  that  moral 
education,  thus  accepted,  be  possible,  aesthetic 
judgment  must  itself  be  formed  by  instruction.  At 
first  approach,  it  appears  as  if  there  were  here  two 
distinct  theories,  and  that  to  reconcile  them  would 
be  a  matter  of  some  difficulty.  This  is  the  fashion, 


HERBART  99 

however,  in  which  Herbart  explains  the  possibility 
of  such  a  union,  of  the  required  articulation.  To 
form  the  aesthetic  judgment,  certain  mental  states 
must  be  brought  about.  Objects  must  be  clearly 
represented  and  sharply  defined;  also  calmness, 
order,  and  stability  must  reign  amongst  representa- 
tions as  they  succeed  each  other.  In  a  word,  char- 
acter has  to  be  formed.  Now,  character  is  a  system 
of  regular  representations,  desires,  and  acts  of  will, 
all  firmly  united,  the  result  of  instruction  that  is 
solid  and  full. 

Character  consists  of  a  man's  desires,  and  he 
desires  what  he  persistently  thinks  about.  ^Jn^. 
struction,  then,  is  the  principle  of  the  formation 
of  character.  _It  is  true  that  other  elements  con- 
tribute to  the  good  functioning  of  voluntary  activity. 
Herbart  admits  that  assurance  and  courage  are,  in 
part,  the  effect  of  our  physical  constitution,  of  good 
health.  " Feeble  and  sickly  natures  feel  themselves 
dependent;  robust  natures  alone  dare  to  exercise 
their  will. "  It  is  for  this  reason,  also,  that  he 
deems  he  may  say:  "A  man  usually  has  more  char- 
acter than  a  woman,  just  because  he  is  superior  to 
her  in  physical  strength." 1  It  is  not,  therefore, 

1  To  appease  the  self-respect  of  women,  let  us  quote  another 
passage:  "Man  is  often  inferior  to  woman;  as  regards  wisdom, 
she  can  promptly  distinguish  and  note  in  social  relationships  things 
that  are  barely  perceptible  and  escape  the  observation  of  men." 


100  HERBART 

less  true  that  the  education  of  character  depends 
especially  on  the  education  of  ideas,  and  that  teach- 
ing plays  much  the  heavier  role  in  moral  culture. 

That  is  why  the  child,  in  his  first  years,  and  while 
still  ignorant,  has  no  character,  or  at  least  possesses 
only  that  inferior  form  of  character  called  by  Her-s 
bart  (who  is  always  drawing  distinctions)  objective. 
Objective  character  consists  of  the  whole  of  the 
desires,  fancies,  caprices,  and  passions  to  which  the 
organism  gives  birth  before  the  thinking  will  has 
made  its  appearance.  In  this  fluid  state  of  child 
nature,  at  a  time  when  representations,  as  ill  ordered 
as  the  waves  of  the  sea,  rush  after  one  another, 
covering  each  other  in  confusion,  the  real  character, 
what  in  the  terminology  of  Herbart  is  called  sub- 
jective character,  cannot  yet  grow  firm.  That  will 
reveal  itself  only  when  reflection  and  reasoning 
power  control  and  rule  the  capricious  and  incon- 
sistent desires  of  the  child,  by  uniting  his  ideas  in 
permanent  groups. 

It  is  fixity  of  ideas,  rigorous  association,  that 
insures  force  of  character.  To  designate  this  per- 
sistence of  the  same  representations,  Herbart  in- 
vented the  expression  " memory  of  the  will."  The 
term  is  neat  and  expressive,  but  possibly  only  the 
term  is  new.  The  memory  of  the  will,  that  is  to  say, 
a  will  always  in  harmony  with  itself,  —  as  opposed  to 


HERBART  101 

wills  wavering  and  failing,  —  or,  again,  a  disposition 
to  desire  always  the  same  things  upon  the  same 
occasions,  is  not  this  what  the  old  psychology  called 
custom?  There  is  no  character  so  long  as  there  is 
no  persistency  and  constancy  of  ideas.  Herbart 
•mistrusts  dispositions  that  are  unsteady,  and  there- 
fore light.  He  speaks  in  a  joking  way  of  those  young 
men  who  to-day  take  six  courses  of  study,  to-morrow 
will  work  alone,  and  the  next  day  set  out  on  a 
journey.  What  he  approves  in  the  child  as  a  con- 
dition favorable  to  successful  education,  is  a  dis- 
position to  will  strongly,  even  when  this  is  accom- 
panied by  a  measure  of  obstinacy. 

If  calm,  reflective  minds  make  strong  characters, 
something  else  is,  however,  yet  wanting  to  complete 
a  moral  education:  there  must  be  action.  And 
here  Herbart  seems  to  hesitate  between  his  funda- 
mental principle,  instruction,  and  a  quite  different 
conception,  the  importance  of  exercise,  of  the  part 
played  by  action.  If  the  child  is  developed  merely 
passively,  under  a  system  of  constraint,  he  will 
reach  manhood  without  possessing  character.  In 
consequence,  it  is  right  to  give  free  course  to  the 
energy  and  initiative  of  the  child.  To  help  him  to 
morality,  we  ought  not  to  depend  on  precepts 
confided  to  the  memory.  A  maxim  is  efficacious 
only  when  it  has  been,  so  to  speak,  lived,  when  per- 


102  HERBART 

sonal  action  has  given  it  life,  and  it  has  become, 
in  a  manner,  a  fragment  of  our  autobiography. 
The  child  who,  from  his  earliest  years,  has  been  ac- 
customed to  give  water  to  the  thirsty,  or  food  to  the 
hungry,  is  prepared  to  formulate  this  general  rule 
of  morality:  " Render  aid  to  your  neighbor  when- 
ever he  has  need  of  it."  And,  in  an  inverse  sense, 
a  defect  of  character  proceeds  only  by  a  fault  re- 
peated several  times. 

Herbart,  in  his  pedagogy  of  morality,  does  not  for- 
get his  pedagogy  of  the  intellect.  Thus  a  many- 
sided  mterestTappears  to  him  to  be  one  of  the  es- 
sential conditions  of  morality.  A  mind  unfurnished 
with  a  rich  store  of  ideas  is  exposed  to  egoism :  its 
limited  knowledge  leaves  the  field  open  to  base 
desires.  We  are  certainly  not  going  to  contest  that 
morality  may  expect  to  advance  with  instruction 
and  with  the  widening  of  the  circle  of  ideas;  but 
we  ask,  nevertheless,  whether  Herbart  does  not 
propose  for  moral  culture  an  unattainable  ideal,  in 
making  variety,  extent,  and  multiplicity  of  knowl- 
edge a  condition  of  virtue.  Does  not  that  exclude 
from  the  moral  life  all  whose  condition  condemns 
them  to  remain  more  or  less  ignorant  or  men  of 
partial  culture?  An  aesthetic  morality  having  as 
foundation  universality  of  knowledge,  is  that  a 
morality  suited  to  all  the  world  ?  One  may  doubt  it. 


HERBART  103 

Just  as  the  ancient  Greek  philosophers  moralized 
only  for  the  privileged  classes  and  forgot  the  slaves, 
so  Herbart,  in  his  conceptions  of  morality,  appears  to 
have  in  view  only  a  society  of  scholars:  a  morality 
that  will  serve  only  the  select  few. 

An  esthetic  intellectualism,  that  might  be  a 
definition  of  morality,  according  to  Herbart.  We 
cannot  speak  to  him  of  sentiments  as  sources  of 
virtue,  for  sentiments  have  their  origin  in  ideas. 
It  is  no  longer  true  to  say  with  the  ancient  moralists 
that  " great  ideas  spring  from  the  heart."  It  is 
the  contrary  that  is  true :  it  is  the  heart  that  grows 
warm  and  animated  under  the  influence  of  ideas. 

But,  whatever  may  be  the  confidence  professed 
by  Herbart  in  the  moralizing  value  of  an  instruction 
which  conforms  to  the  rules  traced  out  in  his  "  di- 
dactics," he  does  not  the  less  distinguish  special 
methods  of  moral  culture.  There  are,  in  fact, 
precautions  to  be  taken  to  insure  the  regular  devel- 
opment of  ideas,  and  possibly,  at  times,  his  reflections 
will  appear  to  us  to  contradict  the  fundamental 
principle  of  his  system,  and  lead  him  to  search  else- 
where than  in  instruction  for  the  conditions  of 
moral  education. 

To  follow  the  same  order  and  plan  adopted  by 
Herbart,  we  shall  distinguish  with  him  six  things  to 
be  done  hi  moral  culture.  This  is  the  list  of  them : 


104  HERBART 

(1)  support  the  child;  (2)  incline  him  to  act ;  (3)  es- 
tablish rules ;  (4)  maintain  in  his  soul  calmness  and 
serenity;  (5)  stimulate  his  intellect  with  approval 
and  censure ;  (6)  warn  and  correct  him. 

To  tell  the  truth,  that  is  an  arbitrary  enumera- 
tion rather  than  an  exact  and  rigorous  classification. 
They  are  like  six  somewhat  frail  points  of  attach- 
ment, on  to  which  Herbart  hangs  all  the  prescrip- 
tions suggested  by  his  great  anxiety  for  the  training 
of  character.  They  are  not  all  new,  far  from  it; 
and  Herbart  is  the  first  to  acknowledge  that  often 
he  is  only  deriving  inspiration  from  old  traditional 
experience,  experience  that  centuries  of  reflection 
have  established  and  rendered  trustworthy.1 

The  first  rule  of  this  scheme  of  moral  culture  seems 
like  a  prolongation  into  education  of  the  need  of 
discipline.  We  must,  in  fact,  continue  to  "control" 
(tenir)  the  child ;  that  is  to  say,  to  keep  order,  lest 
disobedience  and  disorderliness  interrupt  and  ob- 
struct the  course  of  personal  education,  and  the 
child,  in  using  his  liberty,  oversteps  the  prescribed 
limits.  Above  all  else,  dissipation  and  indolence 
are  to  be  combated.  In  consequence,  one  must  take 
care  that  the  child  is  always  occupied,  and  the  best 

1  Herbart  had  none  of  the  empty  vanity1  of  an  inventor : 
"Humanity,"  he  wrote, /'has  already  gathered  along  the  road 
a  great  number  of  truths;  it  is  our  part  to  profit  by  them." 


HERBART  105 

occupations  are  those  which  he  chooses  for  himself, 
in  accordance  with  his  tastes :  serious  occupations, 
other  than  play;  for  games  quickly  weary  him. 
One  must  take  pains  to  profit  by  good  tendencies  in 
the  natural  character  of  the  child,  in  order  to 
strengthen  these,  the  first  germs  of  morality.  We 
shall  rarely  command  him,  and  only  in  cases  of  ab- 
solute necessity.  By  uniformity  in  the  manner  of 
life  which  we  prescribe,  we  shall  endeavor  to  pro- 
mote the  development  of  the  memory  of  the  will. 
A  teacher  equable  in  temper,  always  calm,  and  in  full 
control  of  himself,  who  does  not  pass  from  excessive 
indulgence  to  excessive  severity,  will  contribute  to 
inspire  analogous  qualities:  tranquil  and  patient 
moderation  in  the  child.  Finally,  authority  and 
affection  will  continue  to  play  an  important  r&le 
both  at  home  and  at  school;  the  child  must  have 
a  lively  sentiment  that  the  approval  of  parents  and 
masters  is  a  possession  which  he  can  either  keep  by 
deserving  it,  or  risk  to  lose. 

In  the  second  place,  moral  culture  exercises  the 
child  in  doing.  It  teaches  him  what  he  must  bear 
and  suffer,  in  order  to  possess  what  he  desires  or 
do  what  he  likes.  It  teaches  him,  at  the  cost  of  his 
own  experience,  "that  the  flame  burns,  the  needle 
pricks,  that  falling  is  dangerous."  In  a  word,  it 
habituates  him  to  control  himself,  by  furnishing 


106  HERBART 

him  with  opportunities  of  choosing  between  differ- 
ent motives  for  action.  But  here  one  is  tempted 
to  stop  Herbart,  and  to  ask  him  whether  his  psychi- 
cal mechanism,  seeing  that  it  covers  voluntary  acts 
as  well  as  manifestations  of  thought,  permits  him 
to  speak  of  choice  or  of  option.  In  very  fact,  there 
is  no  place  in  his  moral  mechanism  for  free  self- 
determination.  It  is  no  longer  a  question  of  liberty 
to  compare  different  grounds  of  action,  and  after 
reflection,  decide  for  one  or  the  other.  There  are 
present  only  different  groups  of  ideas  and  a  struggle 
or  conflict  between  them.  It  is  the  strongest  element, 
the  dominant  group  of  ideas,  which  comes  off  victor 
and  leads  to  a  decision.  To  this  Herbart  will  reply 
that  it  is  precisely  the  business  of  instruction  to 
cause  certain  ideas  to  prevail,  and,  in  consequence, 
it  forms  in  us  the  only  real  liberty,  which  is  none 
other  than  harmony  between  what  we  think  and 
what  we  wish. 

The  third  point  in  moral  culture  consists  of  es- 
tablishing " rules"  and  maxims  of  conduct.  Here 
is  the  place  for  dogmatic  instruction  in  morality. 
The  five  moral  ideas  may  now  begin  to  exert  their 
sway  over  conduct.  Just  as  it  is  imprudent  to 
reason  with  children  at  an  age  when  they  themselves 
cannot  share  in  an  argument,  so  now  it  becomes 
necessary  to  discuss  with  them  and  to  show  them  the 


HERBART  107 

consequences  of  their  actions ;  to  make  them,  indeed, 
understand  what  is  the  advantage  to  them  of  obe- 
dience to  the  general  rules  by  which  they  ought  to 
feel  bound. 

Moral  culture  should  be  inspired  by  the  notion 
that  peace  of  mind,  if  it  is  the  end  of  virtue,  is  also 
one  of  its  conditions;  and  hence  arises  the  neces- 
sity of  maintaining  "calmness  and  serenity."  This 
end  will  be  attained  by  encouraging  the  natural 
gayety  of  the  child,  by  seeking  every  means  of  keep- 
ing it  good-humored,  by  letting  it  live  its  child  life, 
by  excluding  the  wearisome  and  fruitless  studies 
which  hamper  the  free  movement  of  his  mind. 
Above  all,  we  shall  be  careful  that  his  desires  do  not 
degenerate  into  passions  through  excessive  stimu- 
lation, and  for  this  reason  we  shall  permit  to  them 
only  a  moderate  measure  of  satisfaction.  At  need, 
we  shall  remove  the  desired  object.  We  shall  direct 
the  activity  of  the  child  toward  the  study  of  the 
arts,  music,  and  painting ;  and  if  he  lacks  talent,  we 
shall  fall  back  on  other  occupations,  collecting 
plants,  insects,  or  shells,  gardening,  or  cardboard 
modelling,  or  even  carpentry.  Herbart  favors  man- 
ual work.  Emile  as  carpenter  is  not  a  displeas- 
ing sight  to  him.  "All  men,"  he  says,  "should 
learn  to  make  use  of  their  hands,  for  the  hands  take 
honorable  rank  by  the  side  of  speech  in  elevating 


108  HERBART 

men  above  the  animals."  In  such  ways  we  shall 
find  means  of  diverting  the  child  from  disturbing 
passions,  passions  which  darken  the  mind  at  the 
period  when  a  calm  and  quiet  spirit,  ready  always 
to  conceive  clearly,  is  alone  in  a  fit  condition  to  form 
aesthetic  judgments. 

When  Herbart  recommends  recourse  to  approval 
and  blame,  —  his  fifth  rule,  —  it  appears  to  us  that 
he  is  departing  from  his  system  and  destroying  its 
framework.  In  fact,  he  calls  to  his  aid  a  foreign 
agency :  the  judgment  of  others.  Is  it  really  true 
that  the  child  is  unable  to  attain  to  virtue  spontane- 
ously, by  himself  alone,  by  the  energy  of  his  char- 
acter, influenced  solely  by  instruction?  We  must 
support  him  on  the  right  path ;  by  censure  and  by 
the  punishment  which  follows  thereon,  we  must  recall 
him  to  it ;  above  all,  he  needs  —  for  Herbart  desired 
that  all  men  should  grow  up  "  without  one  word  of 
deserved  blame  falling  on  their  ears" — that  ap- 
proval and  its  consequent  rewards  should  have  influ- 
ence on  his  resolutions  and  conduct.  Let  us  not 
reproach  Herbart  with  a  happy  contradiction,  which 
makes  him  admit  that  one  can,  and  one  should  mor- 
alize the  child  by  praise  and  by  reprimand ;  measures 
which  will  succeed  only  when  the  master  has  known 
how  to  win  the  esteem  and  affection  of  his  pupils. 

The  sixth  and  last  mode  of  moral  culture  is  hardly 


HERBART  109 

distinguishable  from  the  previous  one : "  Warning  and 
exhortation"  ^'approach  very  closely  to  reprimand, 
and  also  to  correction.  Herbart  considers,  however, 
that  one  can  give  advice  without  adding  reproach, 
and  that  correction  is  profitable  only  when  gentle. 
The  child  must  be  handled  humanely ;  we  must  feel 
all  the  noble  and  good  that  there  is  in  him,  and  avoid 
all  harshness,  not  only  in  acts  but  also  in  speech. 
Moral  culture,  as  defined,  is  "a  continuous  treat- 
ment" :  the  personal  work  of  a  master  who  employs, 
above  all  else,  benevolent  methods,  who  knows  how 
to  make  himself  agreeable  to  a  child,  and  to  please 
him  by  the  interest  that  he  manifests  in  him ;  who  does 
not  forget  that  it  is  a  matter  not  so  much  of  bend- 
ing the  will  but  of  forming  it,  having  regard  to  the 
reasonable  being  who  one  day  will  develop  from 
a  creature  yet  feeble  in  regard  to  ideas,  weak  and 
unstable  in  its  will;  who,  in  short,  knows  how  to 
adapt  himself  in  his  role  as  teacher  to  that  fine 
epigram:  "We  love  the  child;  but  in  the  child  we 
love  the  coming  man." 

Herbart  had  a  multiple  mind,  called  by  English 
people  many-sided,  by  Germans  veilfdltig.  He  saw 
things  on  all  sides.  He  turned  a  question  round 
and  round,  on  all  its  faces.  We  are  not  surprised 
then,  when,  in  the  laborious  and  troublesome  re- 
construction of  a  moral  education  of  which  he  had 


110  HERBART 

destroyed  the  classic  foundations,  after  having  had 
recourse  to  all  sources  of  instruction,  even  to  all 
the  sciences,  and  above  all  else,  to  aesthetics,  Her- 
bart  turns  to  religion,  to  what  he  calls  "  religious 
interest."  He  by  no  means  founds  morality  on 
religion,  but  religion  appears  to  him  as  a  friend  and 
protectress  of  morality.  He  does  not  say  whether 
we  could  do  without  religion ;  but  if  the  case  stands 
so  that  we  think  we  ought  to  have  recourse  to  its 
support,  then  it  is  useful  and  effective;  there  is, 
however,  one  condition :  it  must  be  accepted  in  its 
noblest  sense.  Herbart  knew  the  perils  and  the 
excesses  of  religious  faith,  and  he  denounces  them. 
He  commends  a  religion  of  the  inner  man,  stripped 
of  vain  practices.  He  ridicules  children  who  kneel 
after  the  fashion  of  little  girls,  holding  a  prayer- 
book  in  their  hands  with  the  air  of  young  saints.  He 
scourges  the  religiou»4iypjaerites  who  think  to  cover 
and  excuse  bad  deeds  by  acts  of  devotion.  In  his 
opinion,  religious  instruction  is  a  general  instruction 
which  underlies  and  permeates  all  particular  faiths ; 
which  is  essentially  Christian,  and  yet  preaches 
love  for  those  even  of  a  different  faith.  Religion, 
as  conceived  by  Herbart,  is  indeed  wide  and  tol- 
erant; for  he  requires  that  it  should  be  strength- 
ened in  instruction  in  the  classics  by  reading  the 
Dialogues  of  Plato;  and  also  that  religious  instruc- 


HERBART  111 

tion  should  be  united  with  instruction  in  natural 
science. 

What  Herbart  expects  from  religious  instruction 
is  that  it  should  assist  the  teacher  to  fight  against 
egoism;  that  it  should  develop  the  feeling  of  hu- 
mility in  the  child,  the  feeling  of  the  dependence 
of  individuals  in  their  relationship  to  nature  and  to 
a  Supreme  Being.  As  to  the  time  when  it  is  right 
to  begin  religious  education,  about  this  he  hesitates 
and  remains  vague;  we  must,  he  says,  if  we  wish 
to  make  deep  impressions,  neither  hasten  it  nor 
delay  it  too  late.  He  is  very  emphatic,  and  in 
advance  of  modern  ideas,  when  he  relieves  teachers 
of  the  care  of  the  religious  instruction,  which  then 
becomes  the  duty  of  the  family  and  of  theologians, 
that  is  to  say,  of  the  ministers  of  the  various  sects. 
"The  church,"  he  says,  "may  maintain  relations  with 
the  school,  but  it  must  not  dominate  it."  That 
is  not  yet  to  separate  them ;  but  it  is  already  a  first 
step  on  the  road  to  enfranchising  the  laity.  A  sepa- 
ration which  he  proclaims  necessary,  from  the  present 
in  any  case,  is  that  of  religion  and  science.  It  is 
doubtless  necessary  for  the  soul  to  have  the  right 
to  rest  in  peace  and  unity  in  its  religious  belief; 
but  it  is  also  necessary  that  scientific  speculation 
should  follow  its  course  on  its  own  account  with 
freedom,  without  uneasiness,  and  without  hin- 


112  HERBART 

drance.  Philosophy  is  neither  orthodox  nor 
heterodox;  it  has  its  own  field;  it  works  outside 
dogmas;  and  religion  cannot  claim  either  to  hinder 
the  activity  of  the  reason  or  to  bind  the  forces 
of  nature. 


IF  the  worth  of  a  thinker  may  be  measured  by  the 
number  of  works  suggested  by  him  to  disciples  and 
critics,  I  can  well  believe  that  Herbart  has  no  rival. 
There  is  a  Herbartian  library,  the  wealth  and  extent 
of  which  is  not  equalled  even  by  the  Pestalozzian 
library.  Around  the  work  of  a  single  man  a  whole 
literature  has  grown  up.  In  his  Encyklopddische 
Handbuch  der  Pddagogik,  M.  Rein,  the  noted  pro- 
fessor at  Jena,  devotes  nearly  200  pages  to  the  bibli- 
ography of  the  subject,  and  he  reckons  that  no  less 
than  2234  books  or  pamphlets  have  been  published 
on  Herbart  in  Germany  and  Switzerland  alone. 
According  to  Mr.  Felkin,  the  English  translator  of 
Herbart,  there  are  actually  about  ten  periodicals 
devoted  to  spreading  the  master 's  doctrine.  A 
whole  legion  of  commentators,  moralists,  psycholo- 
gists, philosophers,  and  teachers  have  risen  up  to 
interpret  the  ideas  of  Herbart,  to  popularize  them, 
to  carry  them  farther  and  put  them  into  practice; 
sometimes  to  correct  and  oppose  them. 

113 


114  HERBART 

But  if  the  ideas  of  Herbart  have  made  a  remarkable 
stir  in  general  philosophy,  it  is  in  the  field  of  educa- 
tion that  the  impulse  given  by  him  has  been  specially 
powerful  and  promises  to  endure.  This  writer,  al- 
most unknown  amongst  us,  has  become  amongst 
his  countrymen  the  hero  and  ruling  spirit  of  modern 
education.  He  has  formed  a  school.  His  disciples 
have  multiplied,  and  for  fifty  years  now  they  have 
succeeded  each  other  from  generation  to  generation, 
unceasingly,  in  the  chain's  of  pedagogy,  at  the  Ger- 
man universities,  in  gymnasiums  (grammar  or  high 
schools),  as  well  as  in  normal  schools  and  primary 
schools.  We  have  read  again  recently  in  a  Swiss 
journal,  VEducateur,  this  significant  passage,  "If  in 
Germany  Pestalozzi  was  the  founder,  his  successor, 
the  philosopher  Herbart,  has  been  the  logician  and 
organizer  of  modern  pedagogy ;  and  his  methodical 
work,  having  rendered  service  to  first  one  and  then 
another  distinguished  man,  still  maintains  its  place 
intact  and  full  of  energy,  sanctioned  by  a  hundred 
years  of  experience  and  success."1 

It  would,  however,  not  be  exact  to  say  that  the 
followers  of  Herbart  have  maintained  the  system  of 

1  UEducateur,  the  organ  of  the  pedagogical  society  of  Latin 
Switzerland,  February  28,  1903.  The  chief  editor  of  this  journal, 
M.  F.  Guex,  director  of  the  normal  schools  of  Lausanne,  is  himself 
a  convinced  and  practical  Herbartian,  who  applies  in  his  schools 
some  of  the  methods  recommended  by  Herbart. 


HERBART  115 

the  master  in  its  integrity.  They  have  rejected  cer- 
tain parts  of  their  heritage  which  are  obviously  out 
of  date ;  they  have  modified  others,  either  develop- 
ing or  amending  them.  They  have  in  their  mitigated 
or  improved  Herbartianism  remained  faithful  only 
to  the  dominant  ideas  of  the  head  of  the  school. 
These  have  been  applied  and  explained,  and  to  tell 
the  truth,  we  know  and  understand  Herbart  better 
when  we  have  read  his  successors,  be  it  only  through 
the  exaggerations  into  which,  at  times,  they  have 
let  themselves  be  drawn,  where  the  errors  of  his 
doctrine  appear  writ  large  and  in  full  relief. 

For  example,  two  of  the  most  brilliant  representa- 
tives of  the  Herbartian  school,  Ziller  (1817-1883)  and      ) 
Stoy  (1815-1885),  obeyed  a  common  inspiration,  — for  / 
the  rest,  with  differences  and  many  personal  opinions,  / 
they  were  original  and  inventive,  and  thus  have 
contributed  the  most  to  popularize  the  methods  of 
Herbart.    In  spite  of  their  disagreements  and  the 
differences  which  separated  them,  we  find  them 
in  1868  collaborating  at  the  foundation  of  a  great 
pedagogic  association,  Verein  filr  wissenschaftliche 
Pddagogik,  the  title   of  which  indicates  its  aim, 
an  aim  dear  to  Herbart,  to  establish  a  scientific 
pedagogy.    Also  they  were  not  content,  either  of 
them,  to  write   books,  give   lecture   courses,   and 
revivify  the  ideas  of  Herbart:    copying  what  he 


116  HERBART 

attempted  at  Konigsberg,  they  have  exerted  them- 
selves to  organize  and  direct  institutes  of  education, 
pedagogical  seminaries. 

Herbartianism  in  Germany  is  a  religion,  with  its 
orthodox  and  heterodox  members.  Ziller,  in  fact, 
was  neither  the  one  nor  the  other :  he  was  simply 
an  independent  Herbartian,  who  added  to  the  com- 
mon stock  a  certain  number  of  new  things.  Stoy, 
and  after  him  his  successor  at  Jena,  Dr.  Rein,  are  to 
be  considered  rather  orthodox  Herbartians,  faith- 
ful preservers,  fervent  guardians  of  the  doctrine. 

It  was  in  1862  that  Ziller  established  at  Leipzig 
a  pedagogical  seminary,  which  continues  still,  and 
/  to  which  is  attached  a  practice  school.  The  titles 
of  his  books  indicate  the  Herbartian  tradition  and 
recall  its  terminology :  Introduction  to  General  Peda- 
gogy (1856),  The  Government  of  Children  (1857),  Prin- 
ciples of  the  Doctrine  of  Educative  Instruction  (1865). 
Ziller,  like  Herbart,  believes  that  in  municipal  schools 
instruction  may  and  should  be  essentially  an  instru- 
ment for  eiliisaJin^ni^^  It  is  to  jus- 
tify this  claim  that  he  discusses  one  by  one  the  selection 
of  the  subjects  of  instruction,  their  rank  and  coordi- 
nation, "in  order  to  arrive  at  the  most  perfect  grasp 
of  science,  the  highest  moral  ideal."  Ziller  certainly 
makes  great  mistakes,  and  it  is  not  quite  without 
reason  that  he  has  been  severely  criticised  and  almost 


HERBART  117 

mishandled;  and  Stoy  as  well,  in  the  articles  by 
M.  Buisson  in  the  Dictionnaire  de  p£dagogie.  Even 
in  Germany  the  critics  have  not  spared  him.  Stoy, 
although  he  was  a  Herbartian  too,  treated  him 
as  a  " Visionary."  "All  that  is  good  in  Ziller,"  said 
Stoy,  "is  not  new,  and  what  is  new  is  not  good." 
Emancipated  disciples  generally  dispute  thus  with 
each  other  within  the  lines  of  the  doctrines  of  a  great 
master.  ...  It  is  easy  to  gibe  at  the  concentration 
plan  invented  by  Ziller,  which  consists  in  making 
literature,  or  perhaps  sacred  or  national  history, 
the  centre  of  instruction.  He  connects  all  the  other 
studies  of  each  school  year  with  a  study  in  literature 
or  history :  the  first  year,  with  twelve  fables  or  stories 
from  Grimm;  the  second  year,  with  Robinson 
Crusoe;  the  third  year,  with  the  story  of  the  Pa- 
triarchs, and  so  on.  That  these  methods  are  old, 
I  grant  you;  but  the  end  sought  by  Ziller  — 
though  he  may  not  have  discovered  the  true  means 
of  reaching  it  —  is  not,  therefore,  the  less  worthy 
of  attention  and  praise.  Who  can  fail  to  approve 
of  the  effort  he  made  to  systematize  instruction,  to 
articulate  firmly  one  with  another  its  different  parts 
in  a  unified  plan  and  in  harmonious  relationship. 
Too  often  teachers  —  and  especially  is  this  the  case 
in  the  curricula  of  our  French  schools  —  pile  to- 
gether pell-mell  all  the  subjects  of  instruction  with- 


118  HERBART 

out  troubling  themselves  about  establishing  con- 
nections, or  making  them  converge  to  a  single  goal. 
There  is  succession  and  juxtaposition  of  studies, 
but  there  is  no  coordination.  Each  professor  follows 
his  own  path,  teaches  his  own  science,  without 
troubling  himself  about  what  his  neighbors  are 
doing.  Each  pupil  passes  without  transition  from 
one  study  to  another,  from  the  flowery  paths  of 
literature  to  the  rough  ascents  of  science.  We  must 
honor  Ziller  that,  in  dismay  at  such  scattered  studies, 
he  tried  to  apply  a  remedy  by  unifying  and  fusing 
together  the  two  groups  which  Herbart  had  already 
marked  out :  the  sciences  of  humanity  and  of  nature. 
Ziller,  moreover,  gave  several  reasons  for  this  co- 
ordination being  necessary :  two  of  them  are  psy- 
chological and  one  is  moral.  The  self  is  a  being  that 
constantly  grows  larger;  its  individuality  is  estab- 
lished and  its  personality  developed]  thanks  alone 
to  unity  amongst  the  experiences  and  to  the  in- 
struction which  it  receives.  There  can  be  no  cohe- 
sion in  mental  life  if  there  is  no  cohesion  amongst 
the  studies.  In  the  second  place,  the  condition 
necessary  for  progress  in  instruction  and  education 
is  that  interest  should  be  aroused;  and  since  it  is 
certain  that  there  is  hardly  a  child  who  has  not  a 
natural  taste  for  at  least  one  subject  or  another, 
one  must  connect  all  the  other  studies  to  this  fa- 


HERBART  119 

vorite,  in  order  that  interest  may  radiate  from  the 
first  to  the  second,  and  thus  onwards.  But  above 
all,  there  is  a  moral  reason  to  be  added  on  the  side 
of  concentration  and  unity  in  teaching.  Instruction 
being  the  true  principle  of  moral  culture,  it  is  only 
when  the  knowledges  have  been  unified  and  incor- 
porated one  with  another,  that  we  can  hope  to  pro- 
duce that  unity  of  will  and  action  which  constitutes 
solidity  of  character.  In  consequence,  we  must 
avoid  that  overburdening,  that  incoherence  and 
breaking  up  of  curricula,  the  result  of  which  is  to 
scatter  efforts,  to  disperse  the  attention  of  pupils, 
and  to  make  out  of  them  amateurs  who  apply 
themselves  to  everything  in  a  superficial  way  and 
penetrate  deeply  into  nothing. 

What  Ziller  had  done  at  Leipzig,  Stoy  repeated  at 
Jena;  he  also  established  a  pedagogical  seminary, 
das  pddagogische  Universitdts-seminar}whichuudeTthQ 
direction  of  Dr.  Rein  is  still  prospering,  and  bringing 
together  a  large  number  of  pupils.  Stoy  was  a  pupil 
of  Herbart  at  Gottingen,  and  he  gathered  from  the 
lips  of  the  master  himself  the  principles  of  education 
which  he  developed  in  his  classes  and  in  his  works, 
the  Philosophic  Propedentics  and  Encyclopedia  of 
Pedagogy  (1861),  a  second  edition  in  1878.  Like 
Herbart,  he  excludes  abstract  rules  and  technical 
terms  from  the  beginning  of  the  studies ;  he  requires 


120  HERBART 

that  the  child  make  at  first  an  abundant  provision 
of  sense-perceptions.  To  aim  at  forming  the  mind 
without  previously  assembling  a  great  many  notions, 
that,  said  he,  would  be  "like  wishing  to  play  on  a 
harp  without  strings."  And  it  goes]  without  saying 
that  these  notions  would  be  closely  linked  and  associ- 
ated according  to  the  Herbartian  method.  But  Stoy, 
nevertheless,  did  not  adopt  a  concentration  plan  of 
studies,  such  as  Ziller  formed,  on  which  all  the  sub- 
jects of  study  had  to  be  grouped  around  the  Holy 
Scriptures  or  secular  history.  Let  us  add  that  Stoy 
recalls  his  master,  Herbart,  even  in  his  manner  of 
writing ;  that  the  reader  is  lost  in  the  mazy  windings 
of  his  expositions  and  subtle  distinctions;  that  he 
reaches  the  point,  as  some  one  has  said,  "of  confusing 
the  most  simple  things";  and  in  brief,  after  reading 
him,  one  may  ask  how  the  head  of  an  institution,  a 
professor,  could  descend  from  these  clouds  of  abstrac- 
tion to  set  foot  amid  the  realities  of  practical  teaching. 
M.  Rein  succeeded  Stoy  in  1885,  and  he  has  con- 
tinued the  Herbartian  propaganda.  In  the  kind 
of  pedagogical  laboratory  directed  by  him  at  Jena,  it 
is  chiefly  to  primary l  teaching,  to  the  schools  of  the 
people,  that  he  applies  his  methods.  M.  Chabot, 
who  recently  visited  the  seminary  at  Jena,  found 

1  The  school  annexed  to  the  seminary  at  Jena  is  an  elementary 
school,  comprising  three  classes,  of  ten  pupils  each. 


HERBART  121 

M.  Rein,  with  his  collaborators,  occupied  in  giving  a 
lesson  on  the  prophets  of  Israel,  and  trying  to  render 
this  history  interesting,  intuitive,  and  intelligible 
to  children  of  seven  to  eight  years  of  age.1  Dr. 
Rein  appears  to  us  a  wise  teacher,  very  sensible  and 
practical,  and  also  very  energetic.  He  has  put  to- 
gether eight  volumes,  corresponding  to  the  eight 
years  of  the  elementary  school,  in  which  all  the 
material  of  teaching  is  expounded.  He  has  ac- 
cepted with  conviction,  and  applies  successfully, 
the  greater  part  of  the  methods  and  processes  for 
exciting  attention  thought  out  by  Herbart.  Every 
well-conducted  lesson  must  begin  with  a  prepara- 
tion, just  as  every  play  begins  with  an  explanation. 
The  teacher  first  refreshes  the  memory  of  the  pupil, 
recalling  ideas  familiar  to  him,  so  that  they  may 
meet  the  new  ideas,  and  that  something  from  within 
may  come,  as  it  were,  to  greet  and  welcome  what  is 
approaching  from  the  outside. 

Herbart  lives  again  in  his  disciples,  not  only 
because  they  receive  from  him  the  general  inspira- 
tion for  their  pedagogy,  but  also  seeing  that  they 
imitate  him  in  a  taste  for  formulae  and  systematic 
distinctions.  Is  it  necessary,  for  example,  to  invent, 
as  Dr.  Rein  has  done,  the  term  method  wholej  to 
explain  to  us  that  there  are  in  every  study  distinct 

1  M.  Chabot,  op.  cit.t  p.  61. 


122  HERBART 

divisions  which  can  be  approached  only  in  sequence  ? 
Is  it  necessary  that  he  should  give  us  as  many  as 
four  reasons  to  prove  the  necessity  of  indicating  at 
the  beginning  of  each  lesson  the  subject  about  to 
be  treated  ?  .  .  .  But  Herbart  would  not  have  dis- 
allowed these  slow,  heavy  modes  of  thought,  he  who 
complained  of  the  lightness  of  the  French  intellect, 
about  which  he  said  that  "it  does  not  permit  labor- 
ing over  and  exhausting  a  question." 

It  is  possible  to  be  Herbartian  in  education  with- 
out adhering  to  the  errors  in  Herbart's  psychology. 
Such  a  disciple,  for  example,  was  Otto  Frick  (1832- 
1892),  who  undertook  to  introduce  the  ideas  of  Her- 
bart into  secondary  teaching,  but  who  absolutely 
repudiates  his  empiricism.  Frick  directed  at  Halle 
the  celebrated  school  founded  by  Francke  in  the  eight- 
eenth century,  which,  originally  intended  to  receive 
poor  orphans,  has  now  become  an  enormous  insti- 
tution ;  it  comprises  all  grades  of  teaching,  and  has 
gathered  together  as  many  as  four  thousand  children 
or  young  people.  It  was  for  the  higher  classes, 
especially,  that  Frick  elaborated  curricula  courses 
and  model  lessons,  all  permeated  with  the  spirit  of 
Herbart.  But  he  does  not  admit  that  the  mind  is  an 
empty  re'ceptacle,  in  which  experience  stores  ideas. 
Frick,  on  the  contrary,  attributes  to  the  soul  a  very 
rich,  innate  content. 


HERBART  123 

We  can  give  only  a  glance  to  the  history  of  Her- 
bartianism  in  Germany.  Without  speaking  of  the 
pure  psychologists  directly  inspired  by  Herbart,  Dro- 
bisch,  Nahlowsky,  Lazarus,  Steinthal,  and  others,1 
how  many  other  noted  Herbartians  should  we  not 
have  to  mention  amongst  German  philosophers  who 
have  engaged  in  educational  matters  ?  The  philoso- 
pher, Karl  Lange,  the  apperception  theorist  and 
Director  of  the  School  at  Plauen,  is  he  not  Her- 
bartian?  He,  too,  has  insisted  on  the  strict  de- 
pendence of  education  considered  as  end,  on 
psychology  as  means.  Lindner,  whose  Empirical 
Psychology  (1858)  translated  into  English  has 
contributed  to  extend  in  the  United  States  of 
America  the  ideas  of  the  teacher  of  Konigsberg, 
is  also  Herbartian.  There  is  Beneke,  too  (1798- 
1854),  he  who  has  opposed  the  tyranny  of  Kant's 
imperative,  adopting  the  theory  of  Herbart 
concerning  the  derived  character  of  pain  and 
pleasure,  and  the  intellectualism  of  emotional 
states.2 

1  See  the  Contemporary  German  Psychology  of  M.  Ribot. 

2  One  ought  also  to  mention  Waitz  (1821-1864)  and  his  Gen- 
eral Pedagogy  (1852).     Amongst  living  men  we  should  not  omit 
M.  de  Sallwiirk,  director  of  the  seminary  at  Karlsruhe,  who  has 
published  a  fine  edition  of  the  pedagogical  works  of  Herbart. 
He  criticises  Herbart  willingly,  but  is,  nevertheless,  penetrated  by 
him.     See,  for  example,  his  last  work :   Home,  World,  and  School, 
Wiesbaden,  1902. 


124  HERBART 

For  the  rest,  it  must  be  said  that  the  ideas  of 
Herbart  have  spread  slowly,  even  in  Germany.  It 
was  not  until  thirty  years  after  his  death,  three- 
quarters  of  a  century  after  the  publication  of  his 
General  Pedagogy,  that  public  favor  turned  to  him. 
It  took  time  for  him  to  be  understood  and  appre- 
ciated. He  was  not  one  of  those  who,  like  Rousseau 
or  Herbert  Spencer,  attract  immediately  the  atten- 
tion of  people  by  passionate  eloquence  or  incom- 
parably clear,  lucid  exposition.  A  system  so  compli- 
cated, so  wrapped  in  mystery  and  shadow  as  that 
of  Herbart,  could  reach  success  only  slowly. 
But  once  set  on  foot,  the  movement  -  made  rapid 
and  brilliant  progress.  To-day  the  Swiss  and 
German  schools  in  which  humble  teachers  bend 
their  talents  to  study  and  apply  the  pedagogical 
precepts  of  Herbart  may  be  reckoned  in  thou- 
sands. In  1881,  at  a  German  congress  on  ele- 
mentary teaching,  a  director  of  a  normal  school 
was  charged  with  a  report  on  the  following 
question:  "Should  pedagogy  in  normal  schools  be 
based  on  the  system  of  Herbart?"  The  reply 
was  emphatically  in  the  affirmative.  It  was 
the  same  at  a  congress  of  directors  of  gymnasiums 
in  1883.  On  the  agenda  for  the  day  had  been 
put  the  following  subject:  "How  far  can  the 
pedagogy  of  Herbart  be  applied  in  secondary 


HERBART  125 

teaching?"    The  conclusions  were  here  also  most 
favorable.1 

People  have  sought  to  find  the  causes  of  this  ex- 
traordinary success.  It  has  been  said  that  even 
the  errors  of  Herbart  have  contributed  to  it,  and 
that  they  were  of  a  nature  to  win  for  him  the  favor 
of  his  countrymen,  who  enjoy  abstruse  and  abstract 
conceptions.  But  it  is  not  only  in  Germany  that 
Herbart  has  met  with  admirers:  in  America, 
amongst  a  people  whose  intellectual  character  is, 
however,  very  different,  he  has  found  disciples  as 
enthusiastic.  There  is  little  relationship,  it  would 
seem,  between  the  laborious  genius  of  Herbart  and 
the  intellect,  clear,  but  at  times  rather  superficial, 
of  the  Americans.  Yet  the  fact  is  certain  that,  in 
the  United  States,  Herbart  is  the  fashionable  peda- 
gogical authority.  Dr.  W.  T.  Harris  went  so  far,  ten 
years  ago,  as  to  say,  "  There  are  more  adherents  of 
Herbartian  pedagogy  to-day  in  America  than  in 
Germany  itself."  2  This  success,  which  spreads  over 
two  worlds,  this  growing  popularity,  cannot  other- 
wise be  explained  except  by  real  merit  in  the  thinker 

1  There  were,  however,  some  discordant  voices  in  this  concert 
of  approval,  notably  that  of  Dittes,  who,  in  1881,  in  his  Pcedagogium, 
attacked  Herbart,  amongst  other  things,  for  the  insufficiency  of 
his  statements  regarding  the  relation  of  instruction  to  moral 
education. 

2  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Education,  1894-1895,  p.  322. 


126  HERBART 

who  has  won  it.  If  Herbart  has  gained  a  hear- 
ing, it  is  by  the  incontestable  might  of  his  concep- 
tions. It  is  also  because  he  has  a  system,  a  system 
rich  in  formulae :  one  knows  the  authority,  the  fasci- 
nation, exerted  over  men's  minds  by  the  despotism 
of  a  systematic  doctrine.  Human  indolence  gladly 
reposes  on  the  soft  bed  of  a  ready-made  doctrine, 
in  which  everything,  even  to  the  smallest  details, 
has  been  foreseen. 

It  is  now  fifteen  years  since  the  popularity  of 
Herbart  took  birth  in  the  United  States,  and  his 
doctrines  were  acclimatized  there,  so  that  the  Ger- 
man teacher  became  almost  an  idol  for  a  certain 
number  of  his  brethren  in  America.  In  the  first 
rank  we  note  M.  de  Garmo,  director  of  a  college  in 
Pennsylvania,1  who  has  translated  several  books  on 
r  Tlerbartian  pedagogy:  the  Introduction  of  the  Peda- 
gogy of  Herbart,  by  Chr.  Ufer,  and  Lindner's  Em- 
pirical Psychology,  and  who  has  himself  devoted 
to  Herbart,  in  his  list  of  Great  Educators,  a  work 
full  of  research.2  It  is  from  Germany  that  M.  de 
Garmo  derived  the  spirit  of  Herbartianism  with 

1  M.  de  Garmo  is  now  Professor  of  Education  in  Cornell  Univer- 
sity, Ithaca,  N.Y.— TRANS. 

2  Herbart  and  the  Herbartians,  1895.    M.  de  Garmo  is  the  inde- 
fatigable popularizer  of  the  theories  of  Herbart.     He  has  pub- 
lished in  the  pedagogical  reviews  of  the  United  States  a  large 
number  of  articles  on  the  subject. 


HERBART  127 

which  he  had  thoroughly  steeped  himself,  when  he 
was  following  the  lectures  of  Stoy  at  Jena,  or  when 
he  was  the  colleague  of  Frick  at  Halle,  where  he 
taught  for  two  years.  But  before  de  Garmo,  others 
had  broken  a  pathway. 

In  1889,  Miss  M.  K.  Smith  translated  the  Psychol- 
ogy of  Herbart.  In  1892,  —  the  same  year  when 
there  was  founded  at  the  end  of  the  annual  Educa- 
tional Congress  held  at  Saratoga  by  the  National 
Educational  Association,  the  Herbartian  Club,  with 
one  hundred  members,  —  Dr.  C.  A.  McMurry,  Pro- 
fessor of  Pedagogy  in  the  University  of  Illinois, 
published  the  Elements  of  General  Method,  in 
which  he  set  forth  in  a  sympathetic  way  the 
views  of  Herbart,  as  interpreted  by  Ziller,  Stoy,  and 
Rein.  No  book  could  explain  better  than  this  of 
Dr.  McMurry  what  has  attracted  Americans  to  the 
pedagogy  of  Herbart.  What  they  desire,  above  all/ 
to  derive  from  him,  is  the  tendency  to  widen  the  field 
of  studies,  to  form  minds  rich,  well-furnished  with 
substantial  knowledge,  rather  than  penetrating  and 
refined  minds;  it  is  a  well-considered  intention  to 
break  with  the  old  routine,  with  the  formal  culture 
which  we  used  to  require  from  a  small  number  of 
studies,  chiefly  languages  or  mathematics;  the  cur- 
rent now  sets  toward  studies  which  offer  the  most 
content, — history  and  the  natural  sciences.  Dr. 


128  HERBART 

McMurry  opposes  energetically  what  he  calls  the 
superstition,  the  fetichism,  of  "studies  of  pure  form.7' 
What  has  further  won  over  the  young  and  modern 
American  spirit  is  the  fact  that  Herbart  was  the 
philosopher  of  interest,  of  attractiveness,  and  that 
he  opposed  asceticism  in  education.  It  is  not  at 
New  York  or  at  Chicago  that  people  resign  them- 
selves easily  to  believe  that  the  earth  is  only  ai 
"valley  of  tears,"  and  that  instruction  is  so 
much  the  more  profitable  as  it  is  disagreeable  and 
painful. 

We  could  multiply  examples.  Is  not  Colonel 
Parker,  the  Director  of  the  Normal  School  of  Cook 
County,  a  man  very  noted  in  America,  also  in- 
spired by  Herbart,  — notably,  in  his  plan  of  "con- 
centration" of  studies?1  The  term  is  the  same,  and 
the  method  analogous.  And  can  we  not  also  con- 
sider as  enrolled  under  the  Herbartian  flag,  W.  James, 
the  most  celebrated  of  the  psychologists  of  the 
United  States?  In  his  recent  book,  Talks  on  Psy- 

1  Colonel  Parker  died  in  1902.  He  was  then  Director  of  the 
School  of  Education  in  Chicago  University.  It  seems  only  fair 
to  his  memory  to  state  that  he  expressly  repudiated  the  idea  that 
he  was  a  follower  of  Herbart;  in  general  educational  theory  he 
was  nearer  to  Froebel.  His  plan  of  concentration  differed  widely 
from  that  of  Ziller  and  Rein,  there  being  no  single  centre  of  studies, 
the  centre  he  adopted  with  insistence  and  persistence  being  the 
child.  See  Pedagogies,  by  Francis  Parker,  in  the  International 
Education  Series.  —  TRANS. 


HERBART  129 

chology,1  we  find  the  name  of  Herbart  often  cited, 
and  some  of  his  favorite  theories  reproduced:  that 
there  is  no  general  training  of  a  hypothetical  faculty 
ofmemory,  thatthere  can  be  only  special  cultiva- 
tion of  particulargroups  of  associated  meqiorigs^that 
th^value  oHnat.riip.tion  lies  in  correlation,  in  a  con- 
of  views  to  old  knowledp;eT  and 


lastly,  that  interest  in  the  law  of  instruction^under 
this  condition,  however,  that  a  seeking  after"attrac- 
tiveness  does  not  render  education  too  pleasant  and 
too^_soft1  and  that,  without  suppressing  effort,  it 
aims  only  at  rendering  it  possible  ancfeasy. 

Germany  and  the  Urnted~~States~  are  the  twa 
centres  from  which  Herbartian  influence  radiates. 
But  little  by  little  it  is  penetrating  into  all  the  coun- 
tries of  the  world  as  far  as  Japan.  In  England  the 
translations  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Felkin  have  won  many 
disciples;  this  is  proved  by  different  publications: 
the  humorous  volume  of  Professor  John  Adams, 
The  Psychology  of  Herbart  applied  to  Education;  2 
the  recent  little  book  of  Professor  Darroch,  Herbart 
and  his  theory  of  Education?  despite  its  critical  tone  ; 

1  Talks  to  Teachers  on  Psychology  and  to  Students  on  some  of 
Life's  Ideals,  by  William  James,  New  York,  1899. 

2  The   Herbartian   Psychology   applied  to   Education,   by  John 
Adams,  London,  and  Boston,  U.S.A.,  1898. 

3  Herbart  and  the  Herbartian  Theory  of  Education,  by  Alexander 
Darroch,  London,  1903. 


130  HERBART 

and  as  is  shown  by  such  testimony  as  that  of  Mr. 
Oscar  Browning,  "Herbart  is  a  psychologist  of  first 
rank,  one  might  say  the  founder  of  modern  psy- 
chology." l  The  translations  of  Mr.  Felkin  have 
largely  contributed  to  this  diffusion  of  Herbartian 
doctrine  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  world,  everywhere  wherex 
the  English  tongue  is  spread ;  thus  it  happens  th#t 
in  Australia,  the  Calendar,  the  Annual  of  the  "Uni- 
versity of  Adelaide,  for  1903,  announces  a  special 
study  in  the  pedagogy  of  Herbart  among  the  courses 
of  mental  science,  and  that  "the  students  will  read 
the  Science  of  Education  in  the  volume  by  Felkin." 

In  Italy  as  well,  the  works  of  Herbart  have  not 
failed  to  attract  attention.  From  1886  Professor 
Fornelli,  of  the  University  of  Bologna,  was  publish- 
ing La  Pedagogia  secondo  Herbart  e  la  sua  scuola;  and 
in  1900  appeared  La  Pedagogia  di  G.  F.  Herbart,  in 
which  Mr.  Luigi  Credaro,  Professor  at  the  University 
of  Pavia,  comments  sympathetically  on  the  theories 
of  the  Universal  Pedagogy. 

We  must  admit,  then,  that  in  France  the  great 
German  educator  has  been  too  long  neglected.  Very 
few  French  philosophers  are  acquainted  with  him,  — 
although  it  might  be  possible  to  prove  that  some- 
thing from  his  doctrine  has  crept  into  the  writings 
of  M.  Fouille*e  or  of  M.  Paulhan,  —  and  those  who 

1  Preface  to  the  translation  by  Mr.  Felkin,  p.  11. 


HERBART  131 

know  him  have  not  always  given  him  fair  play;  for 
proof  of  this,  the  too  severe  conclusion  to  the  articles 
by  M.  Dereux  already  mentioned,  or  M.  Auerbach  in 
the  Dictionary  of  Pedagogy,  edited  by  M.  Buisson. 
Herbart  has  found  a  better  welcome  from  M.  Pin- 
loche,  to  whom  we  owe  a  translation,  unhappily 
fragmentary  and  incomplete,  of  the  General  Peda- 
gogy, and  of  the  Sketch;  and  above  all,  from  M. 
Mauxion,  who,  after  having  studied  the  metaphysics 
of  our  author  in  his  doctor 's  thesis,1  published  in 
1901  under  the  title,  Education  by  Instruction  and  the 
Pedagogical  Theories  of  Herbart,  a  substantial  and 
solid  work,  to  which  more  than  once,  in  the  course 
of  our  own  studies,  we  have  had  recourse  for  light 
and  information.2 

What  will  become  of  this  almost  universal  move- 
ment, which  has  carried  Herbart's  name  to  all 
quarters  of  the  globe?  We  are  convinced  it  will 
last  and  proceed  still  farther,  that  a  day  will  arrive 
when  there  will  be  found  in  other  lands  besides 

1  The  Metaphysics  of  Herbart,  and  the  Critique  of  Kant,  Paris, 
1894. 

2  To  complete  the  list,  let  us  mention  also  the  volume  entitled, 
Theory  of  Education  according  to  the  Principles  of  Herbart,  Paris, 
Delagrave,  1884.    The  author,  M.  E.  Roerich,  has  at  least  the 
merit  of  having  been  the  first  in  France  to  call  attention  to  the 
pedagogical  writings  of  Herbart.     A  very  kind  welcome  and  sum- 
mary was  accorded  this  little  work  in  the  Critique  Philosophique, 
1886,  t.  I,  p.  304. 


132  HERBART 

Switzerland  and  Germany,  even  in  the  village 
schools,  hard-working  teachers  who  have  recourse  to 
Herbart  for  safe  guidance,  or  at  least  for  sugges- 
tive inspiration,  fitted  to  sustain  them  in  practical 
teaching. 

People  will  then  certainly  not  concern  themselves 
with  his  mathematical  dreams.  They  will  no  longer 
talk  about  the  strange  comparisons  which  the  author 
of  Letters  to  Professor  Griepenkel  was  enjoying,  when 
he  said,  "The  essential  element  in  childish  curiosity 
consists  in  forming  the  'vault/  or  the  'point'  of  his 
ideas;"  or  again,  "In  order  to  succeed,  instruction 
should  arouse  in  the  mind  of  the  pupil  ideas  which, 
one  by  one,  round  themselves  out  to  a  'vault/  or 
sharpen  themselves  into  a  'point/"  He  indulged 
himself  with  the  greatest  delight  in  these  geometrical 
analogies ;  evidently  they  have  no  value,  but  to  him 
they  appeared  "like  a  treasure,  inexhaustible  in 
their  results."  They  are  mere  empty  redundancies, 
happily  not  an  integral  part  of  the  body  of  the  sys- 
tem, dross  which  can  be  easily  separated  from  the 
fundamental  conceptions  of  Herbart,  which  are  thus 
rendered  more  clear  and  luminous. 

Also,  —  and  the  best  of  his  disciples  have  set  us 
the  example, — we  shall  gladly  cast  aside  his  chief 

;5rror  concerning  the  nature  of  the  soul,  which  de- 
Drives  it  of  all  self-activity,  of  all  innate  or  inherited 


HERBART  133 

power.  It  is  not  necessary  to  have  recourse  to  pro- 
fessed philosophers  to  refute  a  theory  universally 
condemned,  which  common  sense  rejects  as  con- 
trary to  evidence.  It  seems  as  if  it  was  to  Herbart 
that  Proudhon  was  replying  when  he  wrote  in  his 
too  much  neglected  book,  Justice  in  the  Revolution 
and  in  the  Church:  "  Just  as  an  external  communica- 
tion could  not  by  itself  create  intelligence  and  cause 
winged  ideas  to  dart  forth  in  myriads  without  the 
intellectual  preformation  which  makes  concepts  pos- 
sible, so  also  the  events  of  social  life  would  have 
vainly  sought  to  unfold  themselves ;  without  a  cer- 
tain preformation  of  the  heart,  that  secret  command 
laid  by  man  on  himself,  which  is  the  origin  of  justice, 
could  not  have  come  to  pass." 

How  many  other  criticisms  would  one  not  be 
obliged  to  make  regarding  even  the  pedagogy  of 
Herbart  in  his  endeavors  after  system  ?  He  would 
establish  unity  of  mental  life  on  the  unity  of  science, 
the  former  being,  according  to  him,  only  a  reflection 
of  the  order  and  interrelationship  of  the  knowledges. 
It  is  relatively  easy  to  establish  this  interrelation- 
ship within  the  framework  of  a  simple  science,  and 
we  must  honor  Herbart  for  having  insistently  de- 
manded this.  But  how  can  we  follow  him  to  the 
end,  when  he  nourishes  the  beautiful  illusion  of 
making  one  system  of  all  the  sciences,  the  sciences  of 


134  HERBART 

man  and  of  nature  ?  How  coordinate,  for  example, 
the  study  of  historic  facts  with  that  of  mathematical 
reasoning,  or  again,  the  teaching  of  grammar  with 
that  of  geography  ?  A  vain  dream  of  unity,  an  illu- 
sory hope  of  concentration  and  uniformity,  led  both 
Herbart  and  his  followers  astray.  When  it  was 
evident  that  each  science  has  its  methods  and  its 
own  laws,  and  that,  in  consequence,  those  who  teach 
it  ought  to  take  into  account  its  special  character, 
they  believed  it  possible  by  spurious  connections  and 
superficial  welding  together  to  mix  and  melt  to- 
gether all  the  subjects  taught,  and  throw  into  the 
same  mould  all  methods  of  instruction.  Unity, 
desirable  in  so  far  as  it  is  possible,  is  a  dream  when 
made  absolute.  The  Herbartians  have  taken  the 
paradox  of  Jacotot,  "All  is  within  all,"  too  seri- 
ously. And  supposing  that  it  can  be  realized,  there 
is  yet  to  prove  that  the  cohesion,  when  it  has  been 
established  amongst  the  mass  of  knowledges,  can  in 
some  way  be  transmitted  from  the  object  to  the  sub- 
ject, and  there  bring  about  mental  unity,  without 
the  help  of  general  consciousness  and  native  reason- 
ing power. 

But  these  criticisms,  and  others  besides,  —  it  would 
be  easy  to  lengthen  the  list,  —  cannot  cause  us  to 
forget  the  many  other  grounds  on  which  Herbart 
deserves  to  occupy  a  place  in  the  first  rank  of  educa- 


HERBART  135 

tors.    His  work  stands,  in  our  opinion,  as  one  of  the 
most  powerful  efforts  ever  put  forth  to  make  "all  j 
beings  with  a  human  face  "  men  worthy  of  the  name,  \ 
and  to  introduce  into  the  art  of  education  the  spirit  / 
of  philosophy  and  of  science. 

^He  had  faith  in  education,  and  this  well-con- 
sidered and  philosophic  faith  was  an  active  faith, 
which  he  testified  and  proclaimed  by  fifty  years  of 
reflection.  No,  not  in  vain  did  he  devote  a  long  life 
to  the  study  of  pedagogical  problems,  bringing  to  it 
not  only  the  resources  of  a  free  and  profound  in- 
tellect, but  all  the  warmth  also  of  his  heart.  He 
was  before  all  else  skilled  in  reasoning,  but  the 
abstractions  with  which  his  volumes  are  replete  are 
based  on  observation  and  experience.  Reflective 
and  scrupulous  to  excess,  in  both  his  writings  and 
his  actions,  he  took  up  his  pen  only  when  he 
believed  he  had  reached  the  truth.  And  just  as 
under  the  stiff  formulae  in  which  he  enclosed  his 
thoughts  there  moves  a  spirit  that  is  very  supple 
and  resourceful,  so  under  an  appearance  of  cold- 
ness there  is  hidden  a  generous  soul,  which  at  times 
reveals  itself./  He  has  his  moments  of  sentimentality. 
Might  we  not  think  we  are  listening  to  one  of  the 
reveries  of  Rousseau  on  Emile  and  Sophie  in  such  a 
passage  as  this?  "The  greatest  of  all  festivals  for 
the  educator  is  the  marriage  of  his  pupil ;  the  mar- 


136  HERBART 

riage-bed  is  the  end  and  the  glory  of  every  educa- 
tor. .  .  ."  lEducation,  in  the  opinion  of  Herbart,  is 
not  a  trade  like  other  trades;  it  is  a  sacred  mission./ 
All  who  engage  in  the  education  of  their  kind,  if  ever 
so  little  fitted  for  their  task,  believe  themselves  below 
its  claims ;  and  when  they  think  of  the  difficulties  of 
the  work  which  they  undertake,  of  the  responsibili- 
ties which  they  incur,  they  experience,  as  it  were,  a 
shudder  of  emotion.  Herbart  had  known  this  shud- 
der. He  placed  all  his  hopes  of  a  better  humanity  in 
education;  and  that  is  why  he  expressed  the  wish 
that  in  each  society,  in  the  most  secluded  village, 
just  as  there  is  a  doctor  for  the  health  of  the  body, 
there  should  be  also  an  accredited  teacher  for  the 
health  of  the  soul.  He  should  pay  visits  to  the 
families  and  give  them  advice,  and  act  as  consulting 
educator,  watching  over  the  intellectual  and  moral 
progress  of  the  young  generation^ 

Herbart  had  faith  in  instruction,  and  on  this  point 
also  he  was  before  his  time.  Certainly  it  may  be 
objected  that  education  by  instruction  is  but  a 
dream,  so  long  as  instruction  cannot  be  pushed  far 
enough  and  produce  all  the  fruit  expected  from  it 
for  the  common  people ;  and  it  is  for  this  reason  that 
he  himself  used  to  say,  "The  destiny  of  the  world 
depends  on  a  small  number  of  people."  But  why 
not  count  on  a  better  future,  when,  in  a  school  of 


HERBART  137 

universal  science,  virtuous  characters  will  be  formed 
in  all  men  ?  Herbart  was  right,  as  compared  with 
Locke,  who  declared  that,  "  Instruction  is  but  the 
least  part  of  education" ;  this,  doubtless,  was  because 
he  did  not  comprehend  instruction  in  the  large 
meaning  of  Herbart.  He  is  right  when  compared 
with  Herbert  Spencer,  who,  indeed,  also  made  the 
great  mistake  of  denying  the  educative  power  of  in- 
struction. He  will  be  proved  more  and  more  right 
in  the  future,  because  progress  henceforth  is  bound 
up  with  an  increasing  spread  of  instruction,  and  with 
the  development  of  science. 

Herbart  had,  before  all  else,  a  mind  clear  and  free. 
He  considered  that  "the  clear  comprehension  of 
things"  is  the  principle  of  all  education.  If  he 
rejects  the  "categorical  imperative"  of  Kant,  it  is 
because  he  sees  in  it  a  survival  of  the  old  dogmas 
which  claimed  to  intimate  commandments  to  men 
without  giving  reasons.  Morality,  in  his  opinion, 
should  no  longer  be  a  "barricade " :  it  is  a  reasonable 
call  to  complete  living,  to  an  expansion,  full,  free,  and 
unrestrained,  of  human  nature,  under  the  guidance 
of  interest  and  charm.  We  must  not  believe  that 
Herbart,  in  favor  of  this  guidance,  suppresses  effort 
in  life.  If  he  asks  less  of  the  child  and  pupil,  he 
imposes  more  on  parents  and  masters.  Let  us  con- 
fess that,  if  until  now  current  pedagogy  has  demanded 


138  HERBART 

a  great  concentration  of  effort  on  the  part  of  those 
who  study,  that  might  well  be  partly  to  decrease  to 
the  same  degree  the  burden  and  ease  the  pains  of 
those  who  teach.  What  is  in  any  case  certain  is 
this,  — that  the  scrupulous  application  of  the  methods 
of  Herbart,  with  the  obligation  of  carefully  prepar- 
ing each  lesson,  of  adapting  the  instruction  to  the 
actual  state  of  the  mind  of  the  person  who  receives 
it,  of  seeking  and  maintaining  interest  everywhere, 
this  demands  on  the  part  of  the  teachers  at  the 
same  time  more  talent,  more  knowledge,  and  more 
work. 

Herbart's  own  psychology  forbade  him  to  be  an 
adherent  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  since,  accord- 
ing to  him,  the  soul  enters  into  the  world  naked. 
His  theories,  then,  seem  little  favorable  to  the 
notion  of  a  progress  natural  and,  so  to  say,  pre- 
destined, produced  in  the  race  by  the  accumulation 
in  each  generation  of  successive  acquisitions,  and 
transmitted  in  a  natural  way  from  one  generation 
to  another.  But,  in  return,  and  just  because  they 
eliminate  from  humanity  thp  notion  nf  hereditary 
development,  the  philosophical  conceptions  of  Her- 
bart favor  and  render  necessary  tfre  personal  prog5- 
ress  ol  tne  individual.  Man  is  horn  without  in- 
tellectual  patrimony,  without  moral  capital.  His 
business  is  not  to  cultivate  quietly  the  garden  of  his 


HERBART  139 

father;  he  has  everything  to  acquire.  He  will  be 
whatever  the  continuous  toil  of  his  life  makes  of 
him.  And  is  it  not  thus  that  the  modern  spirit  tends 
to  represent  the  ascending  course  of  progress  ? — no 
free  grace  from  above,  not  even  help  from  nature, — 
although  on  this  point  Herbart  was  too  exclusive, — 
in  a  great  measure,  if  not  entirely,  it  is  the  individual 
building  himself,  by  his  own  efforts,  with  the  help  of 
science. 

In  working  for  individuals,  Herbart  worked  for 
humanity.  "Germans,"  he  said,  "have  no  father- 
land;" things  have  changed  since  then,  and  Germans 
have  regained  their  prestige.  He  considered  him- 
self not  a  man  of  one  nation  or  one  race  only.  He 
constructed  philosophic  theories  for  all  men,  for  men 
of  the  future,  for  citizens  of  a  society  to  appear  which 
would  unite  all  human  beings  in  peace  and  love. 
The  five  moral  ideas  which  he  defined,  rules  of  in- 
dividual conduct,  would,  in  his  opinion,  give  birth 
by  deduction  to  the  same  number  of  social  ideas, 
which  would  rule  over  nations  and  over  the  world. 
Thus  he  foreshadowed  how,  by  the  end  of  a  gradually 
expanding  flood  of  instruction,  a  golden  age  would 
be  established  and  spread  its  power  step  by  step ;  an 
age  in  which  conflicts  should  diminish,  benevolence 
govern  men's  actions,  right  and  justice  be  uni- 
versally respected,  man  attain  to  perfection;  thus, 


140  HERBART 

finally,  the  mass  of  mankind  should  share  in  the 
same  ideas  and  the  same  sentiments,  and  the  whole 
of  humanity  form  but  one  society,  a  society  which, 
to  use  his  noble  expression,  "should  have  one  soul." 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

THE  pedagogical  works  of  Herbart  have  often  been  pub- 
lished in  Germany,  either  complete  or  in  part.  We  cite  only 
the  most  important  editions :  — 

Schriften  zur  Pcedagogik,  Vols.  X  and  XI  of  the  uniform 
edition  of  Hartenstein,  which  comprises  13  vols.,  Leipzig, 
1850-1852 ;  the  13  volumes  appeared  in  Hamburg  in  1883. 

Pcedagogische  Schriften,  with  a  biography  of  Herbart  by 
F.  BARTHOLOMAI,  2  vols.,  1877. 

Still  another  edition  was  published  at  Leipzig,  in  1878,  by 
Karl  Richter. 

STOY,  Encyclopaedic  der  Pcedagogik,  2d  edition,  Leipzig,  1878. 

ZILLER,  Einleitung  in  die  allgemeine  Pcedagogik,  Leipzig,  1856. 
—  Grundlegung  zur  Lehre  vom  erziehenden  Unterricht,  1865. 

REIN,  Pcedagogischen  Studien,  2  vols.,  Vienne. 

STRUMPELL,  Das  System  der  Pcedagogik  Herbarts,  Leipzig, 
1894. 

English  and  French  Works :  — 

DE  GARMO,  Herbart  and  the  Herbartians,  London,  Heinemann, 
and  New  York,  Scribner,  1895. 

McMuRRY,  The  Elements  of  General  Method  based  on  the 
Principles  of  Herbart,  Bloomington,  1892. 

LANG,  Outlines  of  Herbart's  Pedagogy,  Kellogg,  New  York, 
1894. 

VAN  LIEW,  Life  of  Herbart  and  Development  of  his  Pedagogical 
Doctrines,  London,  1893. 

JOHN  ADAMS,  The  Herbartian  Psychology  applied  to  Educa- 
tion, 1  vol.,  London,  1898. 

141 


142  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

HENRY  and  EMMIE  FELKIN,  The  Science  of  Education,  its 
General  Principles  deduced  from  its  aim  and  the  (Esthetic  revelation 
of  the  world,  London,  2d  edition,  1897.  —  Letters  and  Lectures  on 
Education,  London,  1901. 

A.  DARROCH,  Herbart  and  the  Herbartian  Theory  of  Education: 
a  Criticism,  London,  1903. 

French  Works :  — 

EDOUARD  ROSHRICH,  Theorie  de  Veducation  d'apres  les  prin- 
cipes  de  Herbart,  1  vol.,  Paris,  Delagrave,  1884. 

A.  PINLOCHE,  Traduction  des  principals  ceuvres  pedagogiques 
de  Herbart,  1  vol.,  Lille,  1894. 

M.  MAUXION,  L'fiducation  par  ^instruction  et  les  theories 
pedagogiques  de  Herbart,  1  vol.,  Paris,  Alcan,  1901. 

DEREUX,  Articles  de  la  Critique  philosophique,  sur  le  principe 
de  la  morale  d'apres  Herbart,  1888  et  1889 ;  articles  de  la  Revue 
pedagogique,  1890-1891. 

Swiss  works :  — 

F.  GUEX,  Le  P.  Girard  eleve  de  Herbart,  a  booklet,  Lausanne. 
1892.  —  Herbart  et  son  ecolet  by  same  author,  in  Vfiducateur, 
Lausanne,  1903. 

Italian  Works :  — 

FORNELLI,  La  Pedagogia  secondo  Herbart  e  la  sua  scuola,  a 
booklet,  Rome,  1886.  By  same  author,  II  Fondamento  morale 
de  la  pedagogia,  secondo  Herbart  e  la  sua  scuola,  Rome,  1887. 

LUIGI  CREDARO,  La  Pedagogia  di  G.  F.  Herbart,  Rome,  1900. 


OF   CALIFORNIA          LIBRARY    OF   THE    UNIVERSITY   OF   CALIFORNIA 


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OF   CALIFORNIA          LIBRARY   OF   THE    UNIVERSITY   OF   CALIFORNIA          Lll 


OF   CALIFORNIA          LIBRARY   OF   THE    UNIVERSITY   OF   CALIFORNIA 


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